CZECH TRANSITION TO AND BACKSLIDING FROM :

WILL “TRUTH PREVAIL” OVER THE ILLIBERAL CHALLENGE?

Hana Svatošová

Thesis Advisor: Prof. Doutor Marcos Farias Ferreira

Dissertation Project Masters in the

Lisbon 2020

Veritas vincit

Seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, and defend the truth until death. –

Democracy is not only a form of , it is not only what is written in the Constitution; democracy is a perspective on life, it consists in the trust in people, in humanness and humanity, and there is no trust without love, no love without trust. I once said that democracy is a discussion. But true discussion is only possible, where people trust each other and honestly search for truth. Democracy, that is a conversation between equals, reflection of free citizens in front of the entire public. – Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred. – Václav Havel

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ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Marcos Farias Ferreira, whose interactive cross-disciplinary classes on motivated my choice of thesis topic and whose insightful reading recommendations and feedback helped me think beyond given theoretical and methodological concepts, and thus approach research in a more critical way.

Next, I would like to acknowledge all my other teachers at ISCSP whose lectures also had a significant impact on my thesis, particularly Professor Andreia Soares e Castro’s classes on European Union, Foreign and Diplomacy, and Professor Sandra Maria Rodrigues Balão’s Geopolitics class.

Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues and friends from Lisbon, who accompanied and helped me on the International Relations journey, Julieta, Teo, Inês, Breno, and especially Pedro.

Most of all, I need to thank my one-year old daughter Sofia and my dear Aurelio for putting up with me throughout this process. A huge thanks goes to the rest of my family; I could not have done it without your love and support.

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ABSTRACT

Democracy is in crisis around the world. Boosted by global phenomena such as globalization and the development of internet, along with a series of crises, which widened the gap between the elite and citizens, this trend was characterized by the rise of populism in both mature and post-communist countries. The former model democratizers in Central- Eastern Europe turned into model democratic backsliders. The illiberal tendencies in the region have been generally judged by the Hungarian and Polish playbook. Although not as dramatically, also in Czech democracy has been declining, mostly since the government of Andrej Babiš in 2017 and the reelection of Miloš Zeman president in 2018. This work examines the changes in the official post-1989 discourse through a two- dimensional discourse analysis, and thus explains what are the origins and character of the current democracy crisis, which arenas of democracy have been affected the most thus far, and finally if the “truth will prevail” over the illiberal challenge. Based on the theoretical concepts of democracy, transitology, democratic backsliding, populism and postfunctionalism, and an overview of historical-cultural context, we analyze the rhetorical strategies, , and foreign policy dominant in the corpus of selected speeches of the Prime Minister and President. Next, we assess the impact of their new discourse on the arenas of democracy contrasting EIU’s Democracy Index and Freedom House’s Nations in Transit rankings. Overall, we sustain that the rise of the Czech illiberal populists has been rather a consequence than the origin of the current crisis, that the character of their new discourse is particular despite similarities with the backsliding neighbors, and finally, that there is hope for truth to prevail, consisting in a reform of certain arenas of the Czech democracy.

Keywords: ; transitology; postfunctionalism; democratic backsliding; populism; discourse analysis 4

RESUMO

Democracia está em crise em todo o mundo. Reforçado pelos fenómenos globais como a globalização e o desenvolvimento da Internet, junto com uma série de crises, que aumentaram o fosso entre a elite e os cidadãos, esta dinâmica foi caraterizada pela ascensão de populismo em ambas democracias maduras e países pós-comunistas. Os antigos exemplos da democratização na Europa Central e de Leste tornaram-se exemplos de democratic backsliding. As tendências iliberais na região têm sido geralmente julgadas com base na cartilha húngara e polaca. Embora não tão dramaticamente, também a democracia na República Checa tem estado em declínio, sobretudo desde o início do governo de Andrej Babiš em 2017 e a reeleição presidencial de Miloš Zeman em 2018. Este trabalho examina as mudanças no discurso oficial pós-1989 através de uma análise de discurso de duas dimensões, e assim explica quais são as origens e o caráter da crise de democracia atual, quais arenas de democracia têm sido afetadas mais até agora, e finalmente se “a verdade prevalece” contra o desafio iliberal. Com base nos conceitos teóricos de democracia, transitologia, democratic backsliding, populismo e pósfuncionalismo, e um resumo do contexto histórico-cultural, analisamos as estratégias retóricas e as políticas doméstica e estrangeira dominantes no corpus de discursos selecionados do Primeiro-Ministro e do Presidente. Logo, avaliamos o impacto do seu novo discurso sobre as arenas de democracia contrastando os rankings do Índice de Democracia de EIU e de Nations in Transit de Freedom House. Contudo, defendemos que a ascensão dos populistas na República Checa tem sido uma consequência mais do que a origem da crise atual, que o caráter do seu novo discurso é particular apesar de semelhanças com os seus vizinhos em retrocesso, e finalmente que há esperança para a verdade prevalecer, consistindo numa reforma de certas arenas da democracia checa.

Palavras-chave: República Checa; transitologia; pósfuncionalismo; democratic backsliding; populismo; análise de discurso

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ANO – Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Czech political movement)

BIS – Security Information Service of the Czech Republic

CEE – Central and Eastern Europe

CEFC – China Energy Company Limited

COVID-19 – coronavirus disease 2019

ČSSD – Czech Social Democratic Party (Czech )

EIU – The Economist Intelligence Unit

EU – European Union

Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (Hungarian political party)

GAL – Green, Alternative, Libertarian

KSČM – Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO – Non-Governmental Organization

ODS - Civic Democratic Party (Czech political party)

OECD – Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

PiS – Law and Justice (Polish political party)

SPD – Freedom and Direct Democracy (Czech political movement)

TAN – Traditionalist, Authoritarianist, Nationalist

US – United States of America

V4 – The Visegrád Group or Visegrád Four

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CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 9 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 12 2.1 The Concept of Democracy ...... 12 2.2 The Transition Paradigm and its Critics ...... 14 2.3 Problems of Democracy ...... 17 2.3.1 Democratic Backsliding ...... 19 2.3.2 Populism ...... 21 2.4 Postfunctionalism ...... 24 3. METHODOLOGICAL OPTIONS ...... 27 3.1 Research Theory...... 27 3.2 Research Strategy ...... 29 4. EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION ...... 32 4.1 Historical-Cultural Context ...... 32 4.1.1 Czech Identity Post-1989: Totalitarian Legacies, Democratization and Havel ...... 32 4.1.2 Czech Identity Today: New Challenges and Threats, Zeman and Babiš ...... 35 4.2 New Official Discourse(s) ...... 38 4.2.1 Rhetorical Strategies ...... 38 4.2.2 Domestic Policy ...... 41 4.2.3 Foreign Policy ...... 46 4.3 Impact of the New Discourse on the Arenas of Democracy ...... 51 5. CONCLUSION: WILL “TRUTH PREVAIL” OVER THE ILLIBERAL CHALLENGE? .. 56 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 60 6.1 Primary Sources ...... 60 6.2 Secondary Sources ...... 62 7. APPENDIX ...... 70 7.1 Discourse Analysis of the President Miloš Zeman ...... 70 7.2 Discourse Analysis of the Prime Minister Andrej Babiš ...... 81

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. A model of domestic politization ...... 25 Figure 2. Andrej Babiš thanking his marketing specialist Marek Prchal after ANO’s victory in the 2017 legislative ...... 41 Figure 3. President’s domestic policy agenda ...... 44 Figure 4. Prime Minister’s domestic policy agenda ...... 46 Figure 5. Miloš Zeman drinking a beer with Xi Jinping in ...... 48 Figure 6. President’s foreign policy agenda ...... 49 Figure 7. Prime Minister’s foreign policy agenda ...... 51 Figure 8. EIU’s Democracy Index scores of the Central European countries ...... 52 Figure 9. Freedom House’s Nations in Transit scores of the Central European countries...... 52 Figure 10. EIU’s Democracy Index scores of the Czech democracy arenas ...... 53 Figure 11. Freedom House’s Nations in Transit scores of the Czech democracy arenas...... 54 Figure 12. Discourse analysis of the President’s agenda ...... 76 Figure 13. Discourse analysis of the President’s rhetorical strategies ...... 79 Figure 14. Discourse Analysis of the President’s construction of social antagonism ...... 80 Figure 15. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s agenda ...... 86 Figure 16. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s rhetorical strategies ...... 89 Figure 17. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s construction of social antagonism ...... 90

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1. INTRODUCTION

Multiple reports confirm that global dissatisfaction with democracy has been growing for the past years, reaching its record in 2019, and affecting even mature democracies. The euphoria from the triumph of democracy marking the “end of history” after the end of the Cold War was replaced with gloomy discussions of democratic backsliding and even democratic reversal in many parts of the world. The series of global crises such as the economic crisis in 2008, the migrant crisis in 2015, and most recently the coronavirus crisis in 2020 have been deemed responsible for this regression, along with new challenges such as the globalization, the development of the internet, particularly the social media, or the hybrid warfare employed chiefly by China and Russia. In fact, the macrostructural conditions revealed the growing gap between the political elite and much of the electorate when it comes to the liberal democratic consensus. Consequently, the unexpected events of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump signaled the rise of populism, whose proponents politicized the issues traditional parties failed to address, offering the deluded voters quick and simple solutions to the complex problems. On one hand, these changes were positive for democracy boosting political participation due to global protests and higher voter turnout, on the other, populist led to “ aggrandizement” in certain democracies limiting the rule of law and civil liberties. The latter trend has been exemplified by the one-time democratization frontrunners Hungary and Poland, nevertheless the neighboring Czech Republic has also been derailing from its official course taken after the in 1989, particularly since the first government of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in 2017 and the reelection of President Miloš Zeman in 2018.

Taking into account the country’s historical experience marked by 41 years of communist preceded by the occupation of Nazis during the Second World War, I find essential to explore the origins of this retreat of democracy and look for its solutions to preserve the country’s freedom and its integration in the Western international structures. Furthermore, democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe is a current, and thus relevant phenomenon, however the research has been dominated by analyses of Hungary and Poland leaving the case of the Czech Republic insufficiently investigated. Moreover, the choice of topic has been motivated by my Czech origin, which can represent an advantage, enabling an insider perspective in the cultural-historical context especially through reading

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in the Czech language1 and life-long exposure to Czech education and media. Simultaneously, the personal importance of the topic could potentially cloud judgement, nevertheless it is important to note that there was a physical distancing from the object of the study during the redaction of this thesis, as I studied in Portugal and lived in Italy. In order to assess the current retreat of democracy in the Czech Republic and the associated risk of the country’s sliding back to totality, I will demonstrate in a two-dimensional discourse analysis how has the official political discourse transformed since the transition from communism to democracy in 1989 and which pillars of democracy have been the most affected thus far. While the first dimension focusing on a sub-systemic level of analysis is based on a selected corpus of speeches of the current political leaders, President Miloš Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, the second dimension offers a systemic perspective founded on a comparison of international democracy ranking indices, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index and the Freedom House’s Nations in Transit. Considering the breadth of the subject of democracy and the related (de)democratization processes, in contrast to the limited length of the thesis, there was a need to focus on a single case study and select a temporal framing for a more in-depth analysis.

In sum, my work asks the following the research questions and proposes hypotheses:

1. What are the origins and character of the retreat of democracy in the Czech Republic?

HYPOTHESIS 1: Thanks to the mobilization of exclusive identity following a series of internal and external crises, which caused the dislocation of the official post- transition discourse, populist TAN forces, represented by the current Prime Minister Babiš and President Zeman, managed to rise to power, and gradually implement “executive aggrandizement”.

2. Which arenas of democracy have been the most affected and why?

HYPOTHESIS 2: Due to the accumulation of economic, political and media power in the hands of the Prime Minister, coupled with president’s attempts at stretching his constitutional powers, no arena of democracy has been left intact, with the political society being affected the most so far.

1 All used texts originally in the were translated into English by the author of this research. 10

As for the structure of the thesis, in the Theoretical Framework, we will review and critically evaluate the literature concerning transitions to and backsliding from democracy. First and foremost, we will attempt to conceptualize democracy, considering its minimalist and maximalist definitions in The Concept of Democracy chapter. Next, we will discuss democratization process through the optics of the Transition Paradigm and its Critics. The chapter entitled Problems of Democracy will investigate the “reverse transition paradigm” and the reasons behind de-democratization process, defining the related phenomena of Democratic Backsliding and Populism. Finally, the chapter Postfunctionalism analyzes the democratization and de-democratization processes within the context of the European (dis)integration theories. The section dedicated to Methodological Options offers a short overview of the developments in the social science research on the Central and Eastern European region, and specifically the Czech case, presents discourse analysis as the preferred Research Theory, and lastly explains the choice and employment of methods as part of the Research Strategy. Before else, the Empirical Investigation highlights important historically specific discourses in the chapter Historical-Cultural Context, which have formed Czech Identity Post-1989 and contributed to Czech Identity Today. Based on the outcomes of the discourse analysis, the chapter dedicated to the New Official Discourse(s) will present the rhetorical strategies and dominant domestic and foreign policy agenda of the President and the Prime Minister, with a special focus on their construction of social antagonism. The penultimate chapter entitled Impact of the New Discourse on the Arenas of Democracy contrasts and evaluates the international scores of the Czech democracy pillars converting them into the five variables of democratic consolidation, “arenas of democracy” as suggested by Linz and Stepan (1996). In conclusion, synthesizing the findings from the theoretical and empirical parts we will answer the question enunciated in the subtitle of this thesis, Will “Truth Prevail” over the Illiberal Challenge?

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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 The Concept of Democracy

Democracy, derived from the Greek terms demos (the people), and kratein (rule), is usually understood as “a form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). People may partake in the decision- making directly or through elected officials, as there are two types of democracy, direct and representative. Besides this dual differentiation, the term has been modified by hundreds of adjectives with the goal of characterizing the diverse subtypes of democracy. In his famous essay “The End of the Transition Paradigm”, Carothers (2002, p. 10) names some of these new terms denoting “qualified democracy” in countries transitioning from post-authoritarian regimes: “semi-democracy, formal democracy, electoral democracy, façade democracy, pseudo-democracy, weak democracy, partial democracy, illiberal democracy, and virtual”. This reveals the complexity of the concept at hand and the issues arising with the attempts to define or measure it. Contemporary Western democracy, which originated in the city-states of Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, and further developed with the emergence of nation-states, is most often described as liberal. Influenced by the ideas of the architects of classical , particularly the philosopher John Locke and the economist Adam Smith, this form of government combines electoral democracy with the protection of civil liberties, hence emphasizing the , rule of law and a system of checks and balances. Overall, in the words of the father of transitology, Rustow (1970, p. 339), democracy can nowadays be understood as “a process of ‘accommodation’ involving a combination of ‘division and cohesion’ and of ‘conflict and consent’”.

According to Professor Stanislav Štěpáník (2018), most Western transitologists base their theories on the conceptual models of democracy developed by Joseph Schumpeter (1942) and Robert A. Dahl (1971). Schumpeter’s classical elitist model perceives democracy as a mechanism for competition between leaders. Besides contestation, Dahl also stresses participation in his two-dimensional model of polyarchy, a term describing actual democratic governance, as he deems the democratic ideal-type unachievable. In sum, both definitions of democracy can be considered minimalist. Compared to the maximalist approach, which is of little analytical use, minimalist definitions of democracy are preferred by many theorists and particularly ranking institutions. However, they can obscure reality leading to misevaluation and subsequent misclassification of diverse cases under one subtype.

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In order to avoid negative evaluations, many studies fall back on a minimalist definition of democracy based on electoral democracy with its “free” and some basic human rights. Supposedly, this allows these polities to qualify as democracies but at the high price of ignoring the “unfair” illusory and non- representative nature of their elections and the actual socio-political exclusion of large communities, which prevents them from enjoying their individual freedoms. (Ágh, 2016, p. 9-10) Taking into account the fading dichotomy between democracy and autocracy due to the growing number of countries “in the gray zone”, Professor Attila Ágh alerts against such simplistic definitions suggesting a new system for defining the opposing regimes that would capture all the subtypes in between. Licia Cianetti, James Dawson and Seán Hanley (2018, p. 247) also denounce the present system of democratic measurement as flawed, “prone to inflating the democratic credentials of states whose political elites are willing to undertake superficial institutional reforms without any broader societal process to validate and embed the values implied by those institutions”. Consequently, the authors point to the difference between democratic stability and quality, advocating a Tillyan process-oriented perspective of democracy analysis.

In his book Democracy (2007, p. 10), Charles Tilly distinguishes four main types of definitions of democracy: constitutional, substantive, procedural, and process-oriented. While Dahl’s five criteria2 for an ideal democracy fall in the last category, Tilly claims that they read as “a static yes-no checklist”. Instead, he proposes comparing the degree of democracy in diverse regimes, but also following the processes of democratization and de- democratization in individual regimes through time. Thus, he rejects solely searching for definitions of an ideal-type and of conditions to achieve and maintain it, considering that “democratization is a dynamic process that always remains incomplete and perpetually runs the risk of reversal – of de-democratization” (p. xi). Taking into account the three historical waves of democratization, as popularized by the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (1991)3, we may agree that transition to democracy is quite an unpredictable process, as it emerges in the world at different times and follows diverse paths, which can, but do not necessarily have to, result in a democratic consolidation. According to Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996), democracy becomes the only game in town when the following five interactive arenas are in place: “a lively , a relatively autonomous political society, a rule of law, a usable state, and an economic society” (p. XIV). Furthermore, the

2 In Democracy and Its Critics (1989, p. 37-38), Robert Dahl lists the following criteria as conditions to reach the ideal of democracy: effective participation, equality, enlightened understanding, control of the agenda and the inclusion of adults. 3 In his book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Huntington distinguishes three waves of democratization: the first "slow" wave of the 19th century, a second wave after World War II, and a third wave beginning in the mid-1970s in South Europe, then Latin America and Asia. 13

comparatists consider other seven independent generic variables: two “macrovariables” of prior regime type and stateness, two actor-centered referring to the leadership of the pre- transition regime and during the transition, and three context-centered concerning the international influence, the impact of , and constitution-making environments. Considering the reversibility of the transition process, some theorists question the adequacy of consolidation as a concept. Nevertheless, the leading scholars in the field of democratic studies, Donald L. Horowitz and Larry Diamond (2014, p. 94), acknowledge it as a category of though representing “the crossing of some threshold of stability, of solidity, of consensus”.

2.2 The Transition Paradigm and its Critics

With the “third wave” of democratization, a global trend “away from dictatorial rule toward more liberal and often more democratic governance” (Carothers, 2002, p. 5) affecting seven different regions of the world4, many scholars from the fields of , economics, sociology, and anthropology, strived to answer the genetic question of democracy identifying conditions that both enable and preserve the regime. While some explained the political system changes as a result of social and economic development (S. M. Lipset’s theory of modernization), others stressed the need for particular psychological attitudes in citizens (E. Barker’s “Agreement to Differ”) or analyzed the social structures (A. Gidden’s structuration theory). With his renowned essay, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model” (1970), Dankwart Rustow, the German professor of political science and sociology, broke from the predominant schools, criticizing their methodological shortcomings and introducing a new model of transitions to democracy. When it comes to methodology, Rustow emphasizes distinguishing between genesis and function, as well as correlation and causation in the explanations of democracy. Consisting of preparatory, decision and habituation phases, his transition model recognizes a single background condition, national unity. Thus, Rustow rejects other often proposed preconditions of democracy, “e.g. high levels of economic and social development or a prior consensus either on fundamentals

4 In his essay “The End of the Transition Paradigm”, Carothers (2002, p. 5) identifies the following trends: “1) the fall of right-wing authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s; 2) the replacement of military by elected civilian across Latin America from the late 1970s through the late 1980s; 3) the decline of authoritarian rule in parts of East and South Asia starting in the mid-1980s; 4) the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s; 5) the breakup of the Soviet Union and the establishment of 15 post-Soviet in 1991; 6) the decline of one-party regimes in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa in the first half of the 1990s; and 7) a weak but recognizable liberalizing trend in some Middle Eastern countries in the 1990s.” 14

or on the rules” (p. 362). Based on the democratization framework put forward by Rustow, a “loosely related body of diverse literature” developed, entitled transitology (Gans-Morse, p. 322).

Early transitologists, such as O'Donnell5 and Schmitter (1986), produced their transition models on the cases of democratizing regimes in Southern Europe and Latin America. In their four volume seminal work Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, they draw a distinction between liberalization and democratization, dividing the democratization process in two phases, the transition itself and consolidation. Like Rustow, the comparatists stress the “no preconditions” perspective and the role of elite bargaining, while downplaying the importance of civil society and international actors. Including the transitioning Eastern European regimes in his article Democracy and the Market; Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (1991), Adam Przeworski accentuates that the process of liberalization does not always grow into the phase of democratization, and thus can easily be reversed. Nonetheless, the so called “transition paradigm” developed by the above mentioned scholars, has been deemed inapplicable to post- communist studies by many critics for its limitedness to a specific region and period, hence inadequate variables, and finally its teleological tendency characterized by a linear historical progression towards a single endpoint. Considering the importance of international factors and mass protests in the post-communist transitions, but especially the overall diversity of the democratizing regions when it comes to historical legacies, ethnicity and religion, most scholars who decided to construct their research on the transitologist approach often had to modify it or combine it with other existing theories in order to accommodate these specificities.

For instance, the British political expert Taras Kuzio (2001) draws attention to the post- communist uniqueness issue asserting that the early area transitologists were limited to the analysis of double transitions of democratization and marketization as in Southern Europe and Latin America, while neglecting the problems of stateness and nationality. Consequently, he stresses the utmost importance of the two variables for a successful consolidation of democracy in the studied region, reconceptualizing the post-communist transitions as triple, in Central-Eastern Europe, and even quadruple, in the Soviet successor states. One of the most prominent transitologist critics, Thomas Carothers (2002), questions the universal transition

5 Guillermo O'Donnell, unlike Philippe C. Schmitter, never considered himself a ‘transitologist’. (Biekart, 2015) 15

paradigm all together, deconstructing its five core assumptions while putting forward multiple “gray-zone” cases of alleged “transitional” countries that are not in fact in transition to democracy, but to other types of hybrid regimes. Addressing the teleological problem, the sociologist Paul Blokker (2005) argues to discard the “convergence thesis” of the transition paradigm and rather embrace the diversity created by the EU enlargement acknowledging there are as many “modernities”, as there are “modernizing agents”. Similarly, the anthropologist Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn (2008, p. 236) criticizes the transitologist notion of a “single modernity as an objective stage of a unilinear history at which all societies arrive at some point through a complete break with the past”, while emphasizing the multidimensionality of experiences following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and thus the necessity to consider the specific cultural and historical context of post-communist countries.

Nevertheless, many transitologists have later on distanced themselves from the simplistic and universalistic theories of democratization of the post‐1989 period prompted by the Fukuyama's End of History (1989, p. 1) thesis proclaiming “the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. In a 2014 panel discussion (p. 93), Fukuyama himself stated that “there’s no reason to think there is a necessary one-way movement of history. All along we should have been focusing on the institutionalization of democracy much more than on the initial ending of autocracy.” O'Donnell, on the other hand, believed his Transitions work has been misinterpreted by critics when it comes to the open-endedness and outcomes of the transition process. In his essay “Illusions about Consolidation” (1996, p. 41), he even attacked his academic colleagues’ concept of democratic consolidation as teleological and static, stressing the importance of “informal institutionalization” of democracy instead:

Polyarchies are regimes, but not all polyarchies are the same kind of regime. Here we see the ambiguity of the assertion made by Juan J. Linz, Adam Przeworski, and others who argue that consolidation occurs when democracy becomes ‘the only game in town’… Przeworski argues that democratic consolidation occurs ‘when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions’. But this does not preclude the possibility that the games played ‘inside’ the democratic institutions are different from the ones dictated by their formal rules.

Based on his broad review of post-communist transition literature, Gans-Morse (2004, p. 338) concludes that it is not clear whether the open-ended transformation approach suggested by many critics “is a superior theoretical framework to a carefully formulated, closed-ended conception of transition”, considering the importance of comparison, and thus the necessity of regime ideal types, in understanding diversity. That is why, despite O’Donnell’s critique,

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this research will employ the transition variables as suggested by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan’s in their study Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America,and Post-Communist Europe (1996). Exceptionally, the comparatists managed to incorporate the post-communist cases in the transition literature, while taking into account the major issues discussed also by many of the critics listed above, thus creating a synthesis of “antecedent regime or legacies approach with that of liberal imperatives” (Chessa, 1997, p. 381).

2.3 Problems of Democracy

In general, transitologists6 agree that a successful transition does not rule out the possibility of a future regime breakdown. However, such a reversal, Linz and Stepan (1996, p. 6) claim, “would not be related to weaknesses or problems specific to the historic process of democratic consolidation per se, but to a new dynamic in which the democratic regime cannot solve a set of problems, a nondemocratic alternative gains significant supporters, and former democratic regime loyalists begin to behave in a constitutionally disloyal or semiloyal manner.” In this regard many recent critics disagree, demanding the joining of the democratic transition and democratic breakdown literatures, as the processes of democratization and de- democratization are two sides of the same coin. In fact, as early as in 1997, Fareed Zakaria warned against the rise of illiberal democracy. Despite the third wave of democratization, half of the transitioning countries failed to grow into liberal democracies, emphasizing the minimalist election-centered definition of democracy: “(…) without a background in constitutional liberalism, the introduction of democracy in divided societies has actually fomented nationalism, ethnic conflict, and even war.” (p. 35) In this sense, Zakaria argues, the Central European countries were more successful thanks to their historical experience with liberalism. Overall, the author underlines the need for the basic tenants of liberal governance, respect for the civil rights and the rule of law, which alone can keep democracy in check, and hence prevent the usurpation of power by demagogues.

6 Compare with Gans-Morse (2004, p. 336): “Scholars of post-communist regime change on average have been remarkably cautious, if not downright pessimistic, with regard to their predictions concerning the prospects of democracy and capitalism in the post-communist region. They have recognized the possibility of multiple outcomes of transition, including the revival of authoritarianism, new forms of hybrid regimes, or some entirely unpredictable turn of events.”

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Many famous thinkers since Classical antiquity alerted against the potentially dangerous nature of democracy as a form of government. That is why a series of documents such as the American Constitution or the Helsinki Final Act were drafted to codify certain “unalienable” human rights, and thus regulate democracies. In his famous book entitled Democracy in America (1835), Alexis Tocqueville, besides listing the advantages of democracy, also discusses some of the problems which may arise from democratic rule. Firstly, he warns against the tyranny of the majority: “the very essence of democratic governments is that the dominion of the majority be absolute; for, in democracies, nothing outside of the majority can offer resistance.” (2010, p. 403) John Stuart Mill echoes his preoccupation about direct democracy in his book On Liberty (1859, p. 8):

The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.

Furthermore, both authors agree that democracy may produce ineffective government due to fragmented political parties, incompetent leaders, and thus inefficient policies. Finally, they consider negative effects of the masses on culture and morals of the society. Moreover, at times the unidentifiable governing mass denominated “the people”, can easily give way to demagogy embodied by populist politicians, but also to authoritarianism masked as democracy. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is a great example of both problems of democracy, as his speeches “envisioning an ‘illiberal state’ show precisely how illiberal actors can ‘think, speak, and act outside …institution seven as they are inside them’ and in so doing change those institutions” (Dawson & Hanley, p. 715).

Even in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which Zakaria called successful in introducing liberal democracy, “malaise about democracy became the dominant mood (…) with a populist turn and growing ”, the Hungarian Professor Attila Ágh argues (2016, p. 13). In fact, as there was a positive scholarly consensus about the region’s exemplary democratic consolidation in the 90s, today there is a growing negative consensus that democracies across the region are “in decline and some might be ‘backsliding’ towards semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes or even full authoritarianism” according to Licia Cianetti and Seán Hanley (2020). Consequently, the once model democratizers, Hungary and Poland, are now treated as model democratic backsliders. In this sense, the authors discourage scholars from perceiving the whole region through the same lens, and thus falling into the trap

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of a “reverse transition paradigm”. In an earlier essay, the authors together with James Dawson (2018, p. 245) also denounce this tendency, advancing that only a few scholars offer “a coherent comparative perspective” of diverse causes for democratic decline across the region. As for the temporal frame of the democratic change in the CEE region, Ágh asserts that consolidation, the key transitologist term of the 1990s, has been replaced by deconsolidation/decline/backsliding in the 2010s. In addition, he claims that the process of deconsolidation in the region has begun already under the Old World Order in early 90s owing to the “contrast between the presence of formal-legal democratization and the lack of social consolidation” (p. 13) boosted by the triple crises7. Under the New World Order, the process of deconsolidation in the CEE region was only sped up by the changes in global security and economy, and the emerging EU’s geopolitical crisis. Enhanced by the Refugee crisis, the sweeping victory of populism in the Visegrád countries, facilitated the formulation of a common agenda and thus enabled the emergence of V4 as a collective regional actor within the EU in 2016 (Koß & Séville, 2020). This so called “unholy alliance”, overstressing national while opposing mainstream EU policies, has changed its strategy from the “return to Europe” to a “return to the past” (Ágh, 2016, p. 25).

2.3.1 Democratic Backsliding

As mentioned above, the concept of democratic backsliding is increasingly used when referring to the deteriorating democratic regimes across the globe, and of course in the CEE region. In their article, Licia Cianetti and Seán Hanley (2020) affirm that the interest in the phenomenon has “exploded” among scholars in the past decade, reaching almost thousand Google search results in 2018. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term backslide accordingly: “to lapse morally or in the practice of religion” or subsequently “to revert to a worse condition”. Due to the original religious meaning, Cianetti, Dawson and Hanley highlight, that the label “democratic backsliding” has been criticized for its “moralistic and normative overtones” (2018, p. 253). Also called democratic erosion, the term represents a wide range of negative phenomena including multiple processes and agents. More precisely, scholars employ this label when investigating “changes in formal or informal institutions that move the polity in the direction of a hybrid or authoritarian regime” (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018, p. 278). Perceiving democracy as “a collage of institutions” that can be put together and taken apart, Nancy Bermeo (2016, p. 14) argues that there has always been democratic

7 The ECE transformation crisis, post-accession adjustment crisis and the crisis over competitiveness due to the global fiscal crisis. (Ágh, 2016, p. 15) 19

backsliding, it has only become more vague, and therefore more difficult to detect by international observers. Consequently, she manifests that following the end of the Cold War, open-ended coups d’état were replaced by promissory coups, executive coups by executive aggrandizement and election-day vote fraud by longer-term strategic harassment and manipulation (p. 6)8. As a result, contemporary democratic backsliding tends to be more gradual rather than rapid and radical. Often executed by a democratically elected official, it can lead to the weakening of democracy and subsequent formation of a hybrid regime or full authoritarianism. On the other hand, Ellen Lust and David Waldner (2015, p. 6) see democratic backsliding as changes affecting the three realms of competitive electoral procedures, civil and political liberties, and accountability, recognizing without precedent that the “apparent setbacks in democratic practices and institutions may ultimately provide context or catalysts for further democratization”. Offering a different structural approach to the phenomenon than Bermeo, they identify six theory families: political leadership, political culture, political institutions, political economy, social structure, and political coalitions, and finally, international factors. These families are treated as switches producing changes in outcomes including backsliding based on three types of causes: long and short-term, supply and demand-side, institutional and systemic. For example, the theory of political leadership exemplifies institutional choices of agents that can be considered short-term, directed at the supply-side, while the structural theories of political economy influence political outcomes systemically both in the short and long-term and are controlled by both the supply and demand-sides. Overall, they stress the need to transition from non-testable overly abstract theories to specific hypotheses subject to testing, which, in fact, they present in their work in great numbers.

As suggested in the previous chapter, scholars tend to explain the malaise about democracy in the Eastern-Central European countries based on the Hungarian and Polish playbook: “illiberal populist party winning an absolute parliamentary majority and embarking on a conservative-nationalist project, concentrating executive power, stripping away or disabling checks and balances, and exerting partisan control over public institutions” (Cianetti, Dawson & Hanley, 2018, p. 245). In their recent article, Cianetti and Hanley (2020)

8Promissory coups are temporary and framed as a necessary step toward a new and improved democratic order. In executive aggrandizement, elected executives slowly weaken checks and balances, limiting the power of opposition. Longer-term strategic harassment and manipulation can consist in hampering media access, using government funds for incumbent campaigns, keeping opposition candidates off the ballot, hampering voter registration, packing electoral commissions, changing electoral rules to favor incumbents, and harassing opponents. (Bermeo, 2016, p. 6) 20

note that some forms of change in democracies may fit this backsliding model “only awkwardly” and the case of the Czech Republic proves their argument. For example, despite the similarities in forms of concentrating power, Babiš’s ANO party “lacks a powerful narrative of Czech nationalism” compared to Orbán’s Fidesz and Kaczyński’s PiS (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018, p. 278). Furthermore, Babiš amassed great political, economic and media power as an oligarch before creating the ANO “anti-corruption” party. This shows that the “entrenchment of private interests in the state and in party ” rather than a grand nationalist narrative, as well as “political disruption” rather than a transformation of existing traditional political parties can represent an alternative route to backsliding (Cianetti, Dawson & Hanley, 2018, p. 249). Contrasting the Czech case with the more radical Hungarian and Polish cases, Hanley and Vachudova (2018, p. 278) conclude that Babiš “may represent a quieter politics of backsliding that is just as consequential in the longer term”. Moreover, Cianetti, Dawson and Hanley (2018, p. 251) alert against abusing the label of democratic backsliding when studying the (un)democratic changes in the CEE region, for “not all forms of destabilization of the status quo necessarily imply backsliding”. Distinguishing between illiberal turns and swerves, Bustikova and Guasti (2017), claim that with the exception of Hungary, the rest of the V4 countries are not, in fact, experiencing backsliding but a series of volatile episodes, so called swerves. Supported by a number of factors such as the rise of populism and “uncivil society”, these processes are allegedly temporary and reversible, but can grow into illiberal turns under three conditions: “executive aggrandizement, contested sovereignty that increases polarization, and dominant party winning two consecutive elections” (p. 168). Overall, Cianetti, Dawson and Hanley (2018, p. 247) deem backsliding a “problematic” concept, as it is constructed on the assumption of a successful democratization based on institutionally-oriented measurements and the Copenhagen criteria which often distort the reality of actual democratic progress in the post- communist region.

2.3.2 Populism

The emergence of the phenomenon of democratic backsliding has been associated with a “broader global populist trend challenging liberal democracy” (Cianetti, Dawson & Hanley, 2018, p. 245). Following the Second World War, right-wing authoritarian populism was thought to be defeated. However, Timbro’s annual report (2019) documents its continuing rise

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in Europe since the 1980s. Having gained significant support over the past decade9, authoritarian populism has become the second biggest in Europe, trumping liberalism, equaling social democracy, and challenging conservatism. Nonetheless, the report warns against “avantgardes”, comparing the ideology to fascism or communism. Despite being fundamentally anti-liberal, it can also be considered fundamentally democratic:

In essence, populism raises the question of who controls the controllers. As it tends to distrust any unelected institution that limits the power of the demos, populism can develop into a form of democratic extremism or, better said, of illiberal democracy. (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 82)

Just like democratic backsliding, the term populism creates conceptual confusion as it takes on different meanings around the world. In their book entitled Populism: A Very Short Introduction (2017, p. 3-4), Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, recapitulate the most common six perspectives of the concept, used in diverse academic and geographical areas. The popular agency approach views the phenomenon as an overall positive popular mobilization force. Laclauan approach goes even further, identifying liberal democracy as the problem and populism as the “emancipatory force” towards radical democracy. Next, the socioeconomic approach understands populism as an irresponsible policy involving “too much redistribution of wealth and government spending”. A recent approach perceives populism as a political strategy of a strong charismatic leader, while yet another perspective associates the term with a “folkloric style of politics”. Adhering to an ideational approach, which combines many of the ideas mentioned above, the authors finally define populism followingly:

(…) a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people. (p. 6)

Defined by what it opposes, essentially elitism and pluralism, the authors stress the transitory and flexible nature of the phenomenon. Consequently, besides the key aspect of morality, populists take advantage of the vagueness of the core concepts: the people, the elite and general will10. These terms are further adapted by the populists based on secondary criteria such as political power, socioeconomic status, and nationality.

9 Support for left-wing populism grew following the financial crisis, between 2009-2014, especially in Southern Europe. While right-wing populism gained strength with the migration crisis, between 2014-2018, particularly in the CEE region. (Timbro, 2019) 10 While the term the people can be understood as sovereign, the common people or as the nation; the elite can stand for political establishment, the economic elite, the cultural elite, or the media. General will is best 22

Thanks to viewing populism as an ideology, Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017) manage to analyze both the demand and supply side of populist politics. As for the supply side, the authors identify three types of populist mobilization: personalist leadership, social movement, and political party, while the common model is a “top-down mobilization around a strong populist leader” (p. 55). Most often, populist leaders carefully construct their image based on an insider-outsider status11 and authenticity, depending on their host ideology and society’s political culture. Presenting themselves as the charismatic strong men, vox populi, entrepreneurs or ethnic leaders, they often create a sense of crisis to effectively politicize certain issues important to the people and neglected by the elite. When analyzing the demand for populism, Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017, p. 100) stress the importance of specific socioeconomic and sociopolitical context, in which “threats to the very existence of society are present”. Accordingly, the Timbro Authoritarian Populism Index explains the current rise of populism in Europe as fueled by “popular dissatisfaction with elites, immigration and supranationalism” (Timbro, 2019, p. 30). On a more theoretical level, Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa Norris (2019), explore the demand side of the phenomenon through the economic inequality perspective and the cultural backlash thesis. While the first theory emphasizes economic reasons behind the rise of populism, taking into account the winners and losers of globalization, the second theory perceives it as a social psychological phenomenon, “a silent counter-revolution” (p. 15) of traditionalists against post-materialists. Overall, populism may have both positive and negative impact on liberal democracy. Through politization, it gives voice to people who feel underrepresented by the elite. However, in promoting majority rule without constraints, it can also endanger minority rights. Consequently, it also plays a different role in each stage of (de)democratization: acting as “a positive force for democracy” in the first stage of liberalization, defending election rights during the democratic transition, but opposing the final stage of democratic deepening (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 88). Finally, the governing parties in Poland and Hungary, PiS and Fidesz, described as “challengers to the European consensus and politics as usual” (Timbro, 2019, p. 8), are great examples of populism’s decisive role in the process of de- democratization.

expressed through direct democracy and can “legitimize authoritarianism and illiberal attacks on anyone who (allegedly) threatens the homogeneity of the people”. (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 18) 11 Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017, p. 75) define insider-outsiders as “men and women who have never been members of the political elite, i.e., the inner circle of the political regime, but have (strong) connections to them)”. 23

2.4 Postfunctionalism

With the goal of finding answers to the recent de-democratization and de- Europeanization processes in the Czech Republic, and in the CEE region in general, we need to analyze the phenomenon within the context of the European integration. Afterall, democratization in the countries in question was possible particularly thanks to the EU’s pre- accession “interest- and incentive-based frameworks” related to the fundamental Copenhagen criteria, but also to the more specific EU rules of the acquis. Many scholars, including Linz and Stepan (1996), assumed that the leverage created by these conditionalities would produce “a cultural lock-in mechanism: over time, actors eventually shift from meeting liberal- democratic standards because of a rationalist cost–benefit calculus to genuine ‘hearts and minds’ commitments based on a logic of appropriateness and identity change” (Dawson & Hanley, 2019, p. 712). However, already in the 90s, other academics were wary of the over-optimism when it comes to the “automatic effects” of the EU membership, deeming impossible the replication of the Western model in the East in such a short period of time due to contradictions between political, economic and social transformations.12 Besides the positive impact of the EU conditionalities on the new democracies, Ágh (2016, p. 15) draws attention to “negative externalities” of EU’s modernizing transnational actions which together with the triple crises allegedly exacerbated the internal problems of the triple transition. Despite the potential negative side-effects of EU’s actions, many authors view precisely “the falling away of EU accession conditionalities and the Union’s subsequent inability to sanction backsliding member states” (Cianetti, Dawson, Hanley, 2018, p. 245) as the cause of the current backsliding tendency in the region. Taking into account the diverse challenges that the democracies in the CEE region face, we will explore the European (dis)integration theory of postfunctionalism, developed by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks in 2009 with the aim of interpreting these new empirical facts escaping the existing theories, namely, neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism.

Rooted in diverse literature, all three schools attempt to explain the course of European integration identifying chief actors and suggesting paths of inquiry. While in neofunctionalism promoted by Ernst B. Haas, further regional integration is achieved though the cooperation and competition of societal actors leading to a spillover of policies,

12 For example, the British-German sociologist, Ralf Dahrendorf (1990), alerted that “political‑legal transformation requires about six months while economic transformation takes six years and social transformation 60 years”. (Ágh, 2016, p. 12) 24

in intergovernmentalism proposed by Stanley Hoffmann and refined by Andrew Moravcsik, national governments, respectively their economic and issue-specific interests, determine the level and speed of integration. Both theories perceive the future of European integration positively, as their key actors are motivated by economic gains. Postfunctionalism, on the other hand, “agnostic” about functionality of decision making and its outcomes, draws attention to “the disruptive potential of a clash between functional pressures and exclusive identity” (Hoogh & Marks, 2019, p. 1116) which may result in constraining European integration. Adopting a multi-level governance approach, the postfunctionalist theory acknowledges the impact of domestic conflict on the course of European integration. Its authors argue that the elite-centered debate over Europe changed with the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, when European issues entered the arena of mass politics, and thus public opinion became “a field of strategic interaction among party elites in their contest for political power” (Hooghe & Marks, 2009, p. 9). Consequently, they analyze the causes and effects of this politization, constructing the following model:

Figure 1. A model of domestic politization (Hooghe & Marks, 2009, p. 9)

Identity, either inclusive or exclusive, having a significant impact on the formation of public opinion, becomes the subject of mobilization reflected in the GAL/TAN social dimension of party politics. As traditional parties fail to accommodate the pre-material values introduced by the European integration within the left/right contestation, Eurosceptic populist tan parties

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cue13 these issues to mass publics that identify as exclusive nationals, thus restraining EU treaty bargaining and compromise overall. Accordingly, postfunctionalism calls attention to the fact that besides functional and distributional pressures, European integration is driven by identity politics.

The founder of liberal intergovernmentalism, Andrew Moravcsik, calls postfunctionalism a non-testable theory, claiming that public pressure on the EU remains an “issue-driven phenomenon”, while defending the continuation of trend toward transnational interdependence and intergovernmental problem-solving (Moravcsik, 2018). In turn, Hooghe and Marks discard his critique for downplaying the impact of the rise of migration and populism on European integration, stressing, in defense of their theory, that “ideology, identity and the desire for self-rule, are no less rational or irrational than the pursuit of material self-interest” (2020, p. 506). Borzel and Risse (2017) point to postfunctionalism’s inability of explaining the Euro crisis which, unlike the Schengen crisis, resulted in a deepening of the integration through supranational delegation, accentuating that inclusive national identities can be mobilized too. Despite its critics, the theory of postfunctionalism can shed light on the current de-democratization processes taking place in the studied post- communist region of Central-Eastern Europe. Leaders of all three governing tan parties, Fidesz in Hungary, PiS in Poland, and ANO in the Czech Republic have been systematically utilizing exclusive identity mobilization during their rise to power and in office. Thanks to the politization of European issues, they started implementing “executive aggrandizement”, leading to a progressive dismantling of checks and balances (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018).

13 Hooghe and Marks (2009, p. 13) distinguish the following phases of public opinion construction: “priming (making a consideration salient), framing (connecting a particular consideration to a political object) and cueing (instilling a bias)”. 26

3. METHODOLOGICAL OPTIONS

When it comes to social sciences research of the changes following 1989 in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, these have been investigated as part of transitology or transition studies, introduced in the theoretical part of my work. According to Petsinis’s qualitative study (2010) covering 362 relevant articles published between 1989 and 2009, most of the early transitologist literature emerged in the field of political science and sociology, employed qualitative methods, and explored predominantly the political side of transitions. With the fulfillment of the Copenhagen Criteria and the subsequent accession of the post-Communist states to the European Union, the democratization process was deemed successful, and thus the focus of social sciences research shifted from the analyses of transitions to the integration of the new member states into the European structures. In other words, the case studies carried out in the first half of the 1990s preferred rather “inward-looking” approaches concentrating on the internal transition processes and potentially regional comparisons, while the research in the second half of the 1990s took on “macro-level” approaches to assess these developments on a supranational level. Petsinis’s work reveals that Czechoslovakia14 and later the Czech Republic has been among the most often studied geographic areas with elite-level and institutional politics at the center of most early analyses. In the later articles, occupied with the problems of the European integration or “reintegration” in sociological context, the country was usually studied together with the other Visegrád states and the three Baltic republics as the best EU candidates. Finally, the Czech case has been treated as part of the comparative research on “old” and “new” member states, and thus the transition studies of the CEE region became integrated into the European studies. In line with the developments in the social science research on the Central and Eastern European region, my thesis aims to present an analysis of the democracy crisis in the Czech Republic anchored in the European studies. However, to contextualize and better comprehend the current processes of de-democratization and de-Europeanization, it will also shortly assess the processes of democratization within transitology.

3.1 Research Theory

As for the choice of a meta-theory, the empirical investigation opts for discourse analysis, which was has been one of the preferred theoretical lenses employed by researchers in the

14 Following the Velvet Divorce, ethno-politics became the area of interest in the case of Slovakia, due to the anti-Hungariangovernmentof Vladimír Mečiar (Petsinis, 2010, p. 312). 27

CEE region, after positivism and constructivism, according to Petsinis’s study. The revolutionary theory, which emerged in 1970s as a critical response to mainstream theories, combines post-structuralist and post-modernist ideas, and thus offers a new analytical perspective on “the more or less sedimented rules and meanings that condition the political construction of social, political, and cultural identity” (Torfing, 2005a, p. 153). Although the methodological apparatus for the application of discourse analysis in empirical studies is yet underdeveloped compared to its theoretical and philosophical scope, the theory has already had a great impact on social science research thanks to its cross-disciplinary approach combining linguistics with social and political science. Over the many generations of discourse theory, scholars progressed towards “a more inclusive and quasi-transcendental notion of discourse and towards a broader constructivist notion of power” (Torfing, 2005b, p. 9), defended for example by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek. With the rejection of the idea of a transcendental center safeguarding Truth or Science, omnipresent in the history of Western thought, discourse becomes the only judge of reality. Consequently, all meanings and identities are constructed and interpreted through diverse discourses subject to specific contexts. As reiterated by Torfing (2005b, p. 14-17), Laclau and Mouffe present the following five key arguments about discourse analysis:

1) A background of historically specific discourses conditions all human action.

2) Discourse is a result of hegemonic struggles for power through articulation of identity.

3) The construction of social antagonism implying the exclusion of Otherness is essential in the hegemonic articulation of identity to stabilize the discursive system.

4) Dislocation of a stable hegemonic discourse occurs with the introduction of new disruptive events.

5) With the dislocation, the subject becomes a split subject and might attempt to reconstruct full identity though acts of identification, involving social antagonism.

Considering the phenomena under investigation and the diverse areas of social reality they affect, from transition to democracy to democratic backsliding and populism, discourse analysis appears as the ideal methodological fit thanks to its cross-disciplinary orientation and focus on context and history. In a globalized world of the 21st century full of new threats and challenges questions of identity take center stage. That is why, discourse analysis’ focus on political formation of identity accompanied by dislocation and social antagonism, might illuminate the current illiberal tendencies in the Czech Republic and the region. Afterall, the dynamic processes of democratization and de-democratization prove that the end 28

of history is not coming any time soon, so we are left with the discursive system which can neither reach its “total fixation” to make sense of the ever-changing social reality. Consequently, the empirical investigation proposes a two-dimensional discourse analysis to illustrate the recent distancing of the Czech Republic from the Acquis Communautaire, and generally from its post-1989 official discourse.

3.2 Research Strategy

(…) discourse analysts need to be more explicit about what they choose to look for in empirical analysis, why they want to look for it, how they are going to do it, and what kind of research results they are likely to obtain.

In this way Torfing (2005a, p. 170) stresses the importance of a research strategy, when contemplating on the methodological challenges of discourse analysis in empirical studies. This work adopts the interpretation of methods as critical and political rather than scientific “hygienizing” devices, according to Claudia Aradau and Jef Huysmans (2013, p. 18) who encourage methodological experimenting in research, a quest for the “messy truth” rather than “fragile objectivity”. At the same time, it aims to incorporate the inward-looking and macro- level approaches subsequently assumed by the transitologist and later European studies with the view of achieving a more complex picture of the phenomena under consideration. Consequently, the first dimension of the empirical investigation will analyze the changes in Czech official discourse(s) on a sub-systemic level, based on qualitative data, e.g. official speeches supported by government publications, interviews, tweets and more. The second dimension, on the other hand, will present a systemic level analysis of five variables, “arenas of democracy” as suggested by Linz and Stepan (1996), comparing quantitative data, e.g. rankings of selected indices of democracy. The use of levels of analysis in international relations originated from the debate between the atomistic/reductionist and holistic/systemic approaches of the behavioral movement in the 50s, focusing their study on parts/components or upon the whole/system (Soltani, 2014). Kenneth Waltz (1959) was first to identify three levels of analysis, the individual, the unit or state, and the system. Professor J. David Singer (1961), on the other hand, considers two levels of analysis, the international system, and the national state. While the “most comprehensive” systemic level, permits for more generalizations, but often lacks in detail, the national sub-systemic level, allows “significant differentiation among our actors”, and hence richer details, but it may lead to over differentiation and ethnocentrism hampering comparison.

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To examine the origins and character of democracy crisis in the Czech Republic as enunciated in our research question, we shall investigate the changes in the official discourse, and thus the political (trans)formation of national identity, through the analysis of the most important speeches of the President and the Prime Minister, which represent the dominant political forces. When it comes to the selected corpus of texts, we shall analyze four discourses in the case of President Zeman: the official Christmas Messages (2018, 2019) and his two special addresses to the nation regarding the coronavirus pandemic (2020), completed by his significant comments in interviews. As for the Prime Minister Babiš, we selected the following four discourses as the most relevant: “Preamble and Key Government Priorities” in the Policy Statement of the Government of the Czech Republic (2018), Prime Minister’s New Year’s Speech (2020), Prime Minister’s Address to all Citizens (2020) and Prime Minister´s Extraordinary Speech (2020) concerning the coronavirus pandemic, again completed by his informal Facebook addresses, interviews and especially his book What I Dream Of When I Happen to be Sleeping (2017). To characterize the discourse(s) and its implications for democracy, we shall focus on the political actors’ rhetorical strategies, domestic policy and foreign policy agenda, paying special attention to the above noted Laclau and Mouffe’s five key arguments about discourse analysis, particularly the construction of social antagonism. Moreover, we shall relate the study of the texts to the theoretical insights reviewed in the first part of this research, namely transitology, the concepts of democratic backsliding and populism, and postfunctionalism. Before all else, we will consider the specific cultural-historical context, particularly the legacy of communism and the transition process.

As for the second dimension of our discourse analysis, we will attempt to answer our second research question: which of the five arenas of Czech democracy has been the most affected so far by the recent illiberal tendencies. By the five democracy arenas, we intend the “interconnected and mutually reinforcing conditions” which must exist for a democracy to be consolidated according to Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996, p. 7). As previously mentioned in the Concept of Democracy chapter, these include lively and free civil society, autonomous and valued political society, rule of law, usable state and institutionalized economic society. Employing these arenas as variables of our research, we selected the reports of two leading global democracy indexes, the American Freedom House’s Nations

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in Transit15 and the British Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index16. While Freedom House’s annual report has been published since 1995 and covers the 29 formerly communist countries from Central Europe to Central Asia, the more recent Democracy Index began in 2006 and tracks 165 independent states and two territories. Besides their tradition and scope of research, both base the rankings on a maximalist definition of democracy, which corresponds to our variables, unlike other indexes such as the Polity IV data series. Notwithstanding their effort at measuring “thicker” conceptions of democracy, their reports are still limited to examining a set of institutions, which can obscure reality about the actual quality of the system. Moreover, a certain amount of subjectivity is always inevitable despite the strive for scientific rigor, as demonstrates John Högström (2013, p. 53) in his study of statistical discrepancies and regional preferences in the three indexes of democracy, the EIU, Freedom House, and Polity IV:

(…) Freedom House strongly favors Western Europe, the EIU favors Asia and strongly disfavors Eastern Europe, and Polity IV favors Africa and North and Central America, and strongly disfavors the Middle East and Oceania.

Accordingly, in line with the discourse theory, we will investigate the macro data in the form of these selected democracy rankings, not as objective elements, but rather as discursive interpretations of reality which constitute the political environment.

15 Freedom House scores the countries on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the lowest and 7 the highest level of democracy, in seven categories: National Democratic Governance, Local Democratic Governance, Electoral Process, Independent Media, Civil Society, Judicial Framework and Independence, and Corruption. The average of these scores equals the country’s Democracy Score (translated to a 0—100 scale the Democracy Percentage), which determines whether a country is a “consolidated democracy” (5.01-7.00), “semi-consolidated democracy” (4.01-5.00) or “transitional/hybrid regime” (3.01-4.00). 16 Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index considers 60 indicators grouped into five categories, with each rating on a 0 to 10 scale: electoral process and pluralism; the functioning of government; political participation; political culture; and civil liberties. The average of these categories makes up the overall Index, in which each country is classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy” (8.00-10.00), “flawed democracy” (6.00-8.00), “hybrid regime” (4.00-6.00) or “authoritarian regime” (0-4.00). 31

4. EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

4.1 Historical-Cultural Context

4.1.1 Czech Identity Post-1989: Totalitarian Legacies, Democratization and Havel

Czechoslovakia’s transition from communism to democracy in 1989, forming a part of the so called “third wave” of democracy, has been widely considered one of the most successful examples of democratization in the world. According to the transitologists Linz and Stepan (1996), the country’s transition commenced with the collapse of the “frozen” post- totalitarianism-by-decay. This prior regime type, characterized by party-bureaucratic- technocratic leadership with geriatric tendencies, de-ideologization and the creation of a parallel culture, was in place during the period of “Normalization” since the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, which gave end to the reforms of the “Prague Spring”. Having lost its legitimacy, the regime collapsed with the Velvet Revolution in 1989, prompted by mass student demonstrations, and especially international events, from the Gorbachev’ reforms of “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, to name a few. Notwithstanding the Velvet Divorce, the monoethnic Czech Republic did not face any stateness problem, hence representing a “double transition” according to Taras Kuzio (2001, p. 174). Overall, the country had good democratization prospects, as it fulfilled the preconditions for democracy, such as “relative economic wealth, as well as past experience with political pluralism” (Carothers, 2002, p. 16), owing to the exposure to democracy and economic growth in the interwar First Republic. Thus, the Czech Republic managed to achieve quite quickly the five arenas of democracy, which culminated in the country’s (re)integration in the Western structures, the NATO in 1996 and the EU in 2004. Today, the Czech Republic classifies as a consolidated democracy in global rankings, suggesting that democracy has become “the only game in town”. Nevertheless, the previously mentioned recent rise of populism and democratic backsliding in the country embodied in the figures of Prime Minister Babiš and President Zeman, make us question the actual degree of this consolidation.

Although significant, Czech historical experience with democracy was rather brief, hence we may assert that nor political institutions, nor civil society had time to mature as in long- standing democracies. First, with the outbreak of the Second World War, the country was transformed into a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia administered by the Nazi Germany, and later, during the Cold War, upon falling into the Soviet sphere of influence, 32

Czechoslovakia lived 41 years under the communist regime, while being occupied by the Soviet troops for 21 years. Therefore, we must not neglect the impact of totalitarian and post- totalitarian legacies on both the system and the citizens’ mentality. The long-term exposure to propaganda, all-encompassing control, repression, and persecution, reflected particularly in “a subservient political culture” and “a weak civil society” (Klíma, 2015, p. 323). Besides the success of the country’s transition to democracy, the process marked by velocity and hence the unpreparedness of its actors, also produced shortcomings. According to Janík (2010), the political transformation was completed in a year or two, while the transition from centrally planned economy to a market economy took the first half of the 90s. The first process consisted in the restauration of parliamentary democracy based on the separation of powers by abolishing the leading role of the communist party, recreating the multi-party system and organizing the first free elections, whereas the second involved privatization and restitution. Due to the simultaneousness and interconnectedness of the processes, accompanied by a lack of clear legal regulation, the mass privatization generated corruption and clientelist structures in the emerging dominant political parties, ODS and ČSSD. Accordingly, the political scientist Michal Klíma (2015, p. 324) radically sustains that the “privatization and colonization of political parties by non-transparent business” invoked a so- called “state capture”, thus degrading Czech democracy into a hybrid regime, specifically clientelistic or illiberal democracy, a variation of defective democracy, long before the arrival of Prime Minister Babiš and President Zeman. Klíma’s argument is in a broader sense reiterated by Professor Antoaneta L. Dimitrova (2018, p. 257) in her article, which views current backsliding in the CEE region as the outcome of processes of state capture “by rent- seeking elites united in party ideological or network configurations”. With the widening gap between elite and citizens, both indicate that the recent protests and “earthquake elections” reflect genuine societal demands for political reform.

Nonetheless, following the Velvet Revolution, the country adopted a clearly democratic, pro-Western discourse, which is still strongly present in the current Concept of the Czech Republic’s Foreign Policy17. The official post-1989 discourse was formulated particularly

17 “The starting point for the values espoused by the Czech foreign policy is represented by our pertinence to the Euro-Atlantic area, underscored institutionally above all by our membership in the EU and NATO. The values underlying Czech foreign policy are entirely consistent with the principles and objectives promoted by the EU in its external relations: democracy, rule of law, universality, indivisibility of human rights, respect for human dignity, equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law. Specifically, Czech foreign policy is based on the legacy of Czech humanist philosophy, especially that of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, on the legacy of the current of democratization spearheaded by the Prague Spring 33

by the last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first Czech President (1993- 2003), a playwright and former dissident Václav Havel, who emphasized the “Back to Europe” strategy and the building of a vibrant civil society throughout his time in office. By founding his on the search for truth, promoting human rights above economic interests in foreign policy, and uniting the Czech society but at the same time criticizing it unscrupulously for “racism, chauvinism, exaggerated caution, destruction of the environment and local politicians for power-hunger, arrogance, opportunism and more”, Havel took up the legacy of Professor Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia (Tabery, 2017, p. 153). Afterall, besides defending the basic principles of parliamentary democracy, constitutional state and general westward orientation, both President-Liberators were “deeply concerned with the moral basis of politics, and in particular, the moral basis of their own participation in politics” (Gellner, 1995, p. 45). While praising their brave dedication to morality, Ernest Gellner (1995) criticizes Masaryk’s and Havel’s “velvet approach” to politics arguing that they took the Czech national motto, “Truth Prevails”18, too seriously:

What had really prevailed in 1989 was consumerism and the all-European endorsement of a system which satisfies its imperatives, as against one which conspicuously fails to do so, and is oppressive and sleazy into the bargain. Democracy and decency obtained a free ride to victory on the back of the consumerist triumph, and while we must be duly and deeply grateful for that, it is dangerous to delude oneself and suppose that they owed the victory to their inherent political appeal.

Furthermore, Václav Havel has also been accused of “apoliticism” and “populism” based on his aversion to political parties following the experience with communist party-state rule, e.g. the slogan from 1989: “Parties are for party members, the is for everyone”19. Although, truth may not always prevail in history, the search for it, embodied in Havel’s legacy, surely can give the country and its citizens purpose and direction.

and , and on the tradition of promoting human rights as a prerequisite for a dignified existence.” (MZV, 2015, p. 3) 18 The “Truth Prevails” motto, that appears on the standard of the President of the Czech Republic, was derived from the proclamations of Jan Hus referring to the theological truth, was adapted by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk as an ethical concept and later echoed in Václav Havel's notion of “life in truth” in opposition to the “life in lie” referring to the Czech communist regime. 19 According to Žantovský, Václav Havel was not an apolitical politician, but a non-political one. While he refused to identify with a single party or ideology, he was extremely political in his thoughts and values. (Půr, M., Jirsa, T., 2020) Thus, he supported the establishment of the party system, the “transformation” of the political movement, Civic Forum, into political parties. 34

4.1.2 Czech Identity Today: New Challenges and Threats, Zeman and Babiš

(…) I believe that above all, we alone are the architects of our own destiny, we shall not be saved from that by the excuse about the selfishness of the world powers, our geographic size, nor by the reference to the centennial fate of balancing between sovereignty and subjugation. (Havel, 1969, p. 473)

Most leading Czech commentators in the collection of essays, Czechia on a Crossroads (2019), see the way out of the current democracy crisis precisely in rediscovering the values promoted by Masaryk and Havel, or some new leaders who would promote them, as both of which seem to be lacking at present. General Petr Pavel (2019, p. 31) claims, that Czech society, like many post-communist societies, has not yet fully understood its role in “continual formation and cultivation of democracy”, as it expected, after the transition, fast improvement of material and social conditions without any contribution. Similarly, the psychiatrist Radkin Honzák (2019, p. 45) points to the Czech historical passivity born from handing over control and responsibility to the ruling party: “the dream of a majority of the Czech population consisting in the idea of preserving socialist achievements, and at the same time the arrival of capitalist level of consumption, did not come true after 1989 – therefore shame on Havel and his visions”. However, the dominant political discourse after Havel did not favor the cultivation of democratic values, as “politicians with a narrower vision of democracy took over” (Pehe, 2018, p. 65). Václav Klaus, who led the privatization process after 1989 and founded the ODS party, went down in history as a nationalist conservative Eurosceptic president (2003-2013), tapping into the Czech myths of the “Munich Syndrome” and the “Hussite stigma” 20. While both concepts have always been driving the Czech political debate, the difference between the older reformers, such as Havel, and current Eurosceptics, such as Klaus, is that they do not see the threat for Europe in the moral decline, consumerism or materialism, but in the “bureaucratic unifying socialism” of the European Union (Beneš, 2011, p. 186). Klaus’s Euroscepticism culminated in his refusal to sign the Lisbon treaty. Among other controversies of his presidency, stands out his demoralizing mass amnesty including high-profile corruption cases, or his fierce criticism of environmentalism, the “new religion of the West” limiting human freedom, and civil society, “the unelected elites” seeking to interfere without mandate in politics.

20 The first myth refers to the Czech geopolitical insecurity and a sense of distrust in the real intentions of superpowers flowing from the “Munich Betrayal” or the “Munich Agreement”, when the main European powers (France, UK, Italy and Germany) decided about the cession of the Czech part of Sudetenland to Nazi Germany without the presence of Czechoslovakia, “about us, without us”. According to the second myth, the Czech Republic ought to play the role of a reformer or mentor of the European or world order thanks to its unique historical experience and geographical position, in order to preserve European civilization. 35

Besides the already mentioned domestic factors, such as the (post)totalitarian and transition legacies, and the failure of traditional parties and its leaders, it is important to mention other macro-structural conditions which influenced the change in official discourse, and thus the current democracy crisis. The Czech society was certainly not immune to the polarization prompted by globalization and the emergence of the internet, respectively the social media. These growing divisions between the economic winners and losers, and ideological GAL and TAN, are further deepened by Russian and Chinese geopolitical players ranging a disinformation war on Europe. The most recent Security Information Service (BIS) report confirms that Russian and Chinese hybrid activities, attempting to weaken Czech democratic system and influence the country’s foreign policy, continue to represent a serious security risk. According to the spokesman of BIS, Ladislav Šticha, “while the goal of Russia is to get the Czech Republic back into its sphere of influence, the Chinese use us as a gateway to the European Union, which means to economic prosperity” (ČT24, 2019). Although the Czech Republic has not accepted almost any migrants nor experienced terrorist attacks like other European countries, the fear of an invasion of the unknown, boosted by the intense politization of the migration and terrorism issues, pervaded the population. Instead of trying to reunite the nation under a coherent, long-term program ensuring stability and continuity, populists rose to the occasion offering apparently simple and quick fixes to the complex new challenges and threats of security, criminality, modernization etc., while triggering even more social antagonism on their chase for the enemy responsible for the crises. Consequently, thanks to a combination of the above cited micro and macro-structural conditions, the populist movement ANO of the billionaire Andrej Babiš celebrated a landslide victory in the 2017 parliamentary election21, with almost 30% of the vote and 70 seats, and the reelection of President Miloš Zeman with 52% of the vote following a tight run-off against his rival Jiří Drahoš, a pro-European academic. Moreover, the two leading politicians formed an alliance, which played a significant role in their government and reelection success, respectively22.

According to Tabery (2017), President Miloš Zeman represents “a phenomenon of the 20th century”, while the Prime Minister Andrej Babiš “a phenomenon of the 21st century”.

21 Besides ANO, two other parties entered the Chamber of Deputies for the first time, the Pirate Party (22 seats), focused on transparency and anti-corruption, and SPD (20 seats), concentrated on anti-immigration and Euroscepticism. 22 President Zeman appointed Andrej Babiš twice Prime Minister despite his criminal prosecution and the lack of a parliamentary majority. In turn, the Prime Minister officially endorsed the reelection of the President. 36

While the former transformed his political career of an intellectual star of the Velvet Revolution warning against the dangers of populism23 into that of a populist yearning for power and attention, the latter, younger and richer, could be considered his pupil when it comes to the lack of vision and greatly emotional populist means of expression and government. Unlike their predecessors, Masaryk or Havel, neither of the two presents a clear political-ideological orientation, which fits Mudde and Kaltwasser’s (2017) definition of populism as a thin-centered ideology. Rather, both the Prime-Minister and the President claim to represent the general will of the people against the corrupt elite. As the first directly elected President in Czech history, Miloš Zeman has taken advantage of the increased legitimacy to assume a role of an active political player, stretching, on many occasions, his constitutional powers to push his agenda. President’s transgressions, summarized in the constitutional complaint filed by the Senate, include attempts to influence court cases, appointing governments regardless of the no confidence motion (case of Rusnok and Babiš), refusing to appoint (case of Poche) and dismiss (case of Babiš) ministers proposed to him by the head of government or disrespecting the official Concept of of the Czech Republic’s Foreign Policy (iRozhlas, 2019). Despite claiming to fight corruption, Andrej Babiš’s time in politics has also been filled with controversies followed by mass demonstrations24. As the first criminally prosecuted Prime Minister in Czech history, the billionaire has been investigated for the abuse of €2 million in EU subsidies designated for small businesses in the construction of his farm and hotel complex “Stork’s Nest” and the related kidnapping of his son to Crimea, and last but not least for the conflict of interest25, regarding the EU funding of his Agrofert conglomerate, operating agriculture, food, chemicals and mass media26. Overall, Andrej Babiš and Miloš Zeman “have the Czech Republic in their power”, as they control a decisive part of political, media, business and public sphere, the journalist Pavel Šafr

23 Miloš Zeman, as a deputy in 1992, proclaimed: “I would like to warn against a generally spread and so to speak populist illusion, which rises from the idea, that the voice of the people is the voice of God, and that what the Parliament does not fix, citizens do (…) A third of this country’s population is simple-minded. Every seventh person is either idiotic, retarded or an alcoholic. About half of the population has a below-average IQ in this country. (… These people divide the world – authors’ note) into simple, often opposite elements. Sometimes it is called black-and-white thinking.” (Zeman, 1992, as cited in Naxera & Krčál, 2020) 24 One of the demonstrations calling for the resignation of Babiš and his justice secretary Marie Benešová organized by “Million Moments for Democracy” in Letná Park in Prague on 23 June 2019 counted around 250 thousand people, thus becoming the largest protest since the Velvet Revolution. 25 The second audit of the European Commission confirmed PM Babiš’ alleged conflict of interest stopping the EU subsidies for Agrofert Group until its resolution, which the PM should do “by either selling his business interests, stop receiving public subsidies or stepping down from public office”. (, 2020) 26 The MAFRA media group belonging to Agrofert runs, among others, two of the largest Czech newspapers, Mladá fronta DNES and Lidové noviny, the online news portals iDNES.cz and Lidovky.cz, and the most popular radio station Impuls. 37

warns (2019, p. 223). However, besides their similar populist appeal, effective collaboration, and executive aggrandizement tendencies, the two politicians differ in their image, rhetoric style and even some policy preferences, which shall be explored in further detail through the discourse analysis.

4.2 New Official Discourse(s)

4.2.1 Rhetorical Strategies

As mentioned in the Populism chapter, also Miloš Zeman and Andrej Babiš construct their populist image based on an insider-outsider status. While the President was clearly a political insider already upon his first election, having led the ČSSD party (1993–2001) and served as the Prime Minister (1998-2002). After taking time off politics, he returned with a new perspective to stand up to the corrupt elite and the others making use of his long- standing experience and study. Andrej Babiš, on the other hand, built his populist appeal on the identity of an outsider with a non-political background, despite his evident past involvement with top politicians, including Zeman27, as he allegedly collaborated with Czechoslovak secret police and later “his business profited from privatization and state agricultural subsidies” (Havlík, 2019, p. 373). Like the President, Andrej Babiš also decided to fight the corrupt elite, but as a hard-working self-made businessman promising to “run the state like a (family) business”. The respective insider-outsider identities assumed by the President and the Prime Minister are reflected in their rhetorical strategies, “that appear normal and neutral on the surface but which may in fact be ideological and seek to shape the representation of events and persons for particular ends” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 5). By exposing these strategies employed in the selected corpus of official discourses, namely the lexical choices, overlexicalization, intertextual references, rhetorical tropes, modality, and hedging, we seek to understand why and how the President and the Prime Minister use language and grammar to assert their authority, influence the audience, and thus push a specific agenda. As for the lexical choices determining the genre of communication, both the President’s and the Prime Minister’s style could be described as conversational, mixing

27 In 2001, Zeman’s Government decided to privatize Unipetrol to Babiš’s company Agrofert, that got out of the contract last minute. This resulted in Zeman’s criticism of Babiš, when the businessman decided to enter politics: “As for Mr. Babiš, I was a direct participant in the signing of a treaty with him during the privatization of Unipetrol and I declare that Mr. abide by this signed agreement. This for me is a sufficient proof of Mr. Babiš’s lack of credibility. Regardless of certain other suspicions, which shall eventually be investigated, I hope.” (Zeman, 2011) 38

informal and formal lexicons to create an impression of a “dialogue between equals”, thus infusing official discourse with a populist voice (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 44-45).

Nevertheless, Zeman’s vocabulary compared to that of Babiš is quite varied, ranging from even vulgar expressions, employed when referring to the others, e. g. “primitive fools” (D1), “barking and screeching of our news commentators” (D3) to literary language often enriched by metaphors and other tropes, e. g. “We have only one weapon at our disposal since the vaccine does not yet exist. A small piece of fabric is that weapon. (…) We called up to arms the victor over the first wave of coronavirus. (…) When the dust settles, we will count our gains and losses” (D4). Furthermore, the President is known for his love of neologisms, with “The Prague Café”28 being the most popular one. Present in almost every analyzed discourse, these new terms mostly used to characterize the other, and thus to further divide the society, carry a pejorative connotation, e. g. “The Better-People” (D1), “The Climate Prophets” (D2) and “The Anti-Mask People” (D4). Besides metaphors and neologisms, Zeman often takes advantage of intertextuality to show off his intelligence, and infuse his discourse with humor, as his references often entail a satirical undertone. Most often he cites the founder and first President of Czechoslovakia Masaryk, thus assuming the authority of the well-esteemed professor, e.g. “I would just like to recall two Masaryk’s quotes. First, we already have democracy; now we need some democrats. (…) The second quote goes, being upset is not a program.” (D1). Overlexicalization is a common repetition tool, which the President uses to build up the emotional intensity, even urgency, of the message. In the case of the redundant expression “normal citizens” (D1), the ideological content is clear, creating the populist opposition to the elite or the other. Throughout his discourses, the President uses lowered modality most often, to assert his authority in a sincere and educated way, no matter the message. Simultaneously, he thus manages to communicate “a sense of his moral stance, giving access to his internal world” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 188). His last discourse is more assertive, but still polite sounding, as he uses first person plural imperative (softening impact) considering himself one of the addressees of his own appeal. Finally, The President uses hedging to a great degree predominantly to structure his discourse to appear detailed, precise, and more credible, listing examples and offering extra historical and statistical information. Overall, his use of strategies translates into his relation to the audience, which comes off as rather superior, as that of a teacher patiently educating students and occasionally

28 “The Prague Café” is a pejorative term, which became popular after Zeman’s 2013 election, referring to an indefinite group of city intellectuals which are interested in politics promoting Havel’s truth and love philosophy. 39

rebuking them, e.g. “Do you know who the parachutists are in this sense? They are people, who are thrown on the candidate list from the top.” (D2), “Allow me to remind you of a beautiful phrase from Talmud, the one who saved one human life, saved the entire humankind” (D4).

In the case of the Prime Minister, it is important to note that his discourse is determined to a great degree by the work of his PR team, as he decided to invest extensively into political marketing, employing some of the country’s best experts29. Like Zeman, Babiš combines the informal and formal lexicons to approximate the audience, however his colloquial word choice is more moderate, e.g. “These show-offs who are supposed to be in quarantine and instead are having a beer together at the pub door are not really heroes.” (D7), “We all wanted to breathe freely and enjoy summer” (D8). Moreover, in spoken form, the Prime Minister often makes grammar mistakes, mispronounces certain words, and invents others, as his native language is Slovak, not Czech. When it comes to formal language, Babiš makes use of his background, favoring business rhetoric over literary expressions. The empty corporate speak, which “serves to conceal where the actual responsibility lies” as it distracts us “from the real causes and necessary solutions” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 34), is evident in the use of ambiguous expressions related to performance, English words and statistical information: “The solution designed in such a way is ineffective (…) the pursuit of six core strategic tenets for the development of our country” (D5), “Moody's raised our rating to the highest point in history (…) according to the Deloitte Index (…) of the thirty-six countries evaluated by the OECD, we are the tenth best” (D6). Also the Prime Minister employs rhetorical tropes such as metaphors and similes, however they are more popular and modern than those of the President: “Imagine I was Harry Potter and had a magic wand and could transform these projects into reality right now. We would immediately become a second Switzerland” (D6). Overlexicalization, giving “a sense of over-persuasion and is normally evidence that something is problematic or of ideological contention” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 37), is utilized in the Prime Minister’s speeches for example to convince the citizens of the country’s progress under his Government:

Can we take joy in the fact that we are so well off? Don't think we are doing well? I do! (…) Yes, the Czech Republic is doing well. Very well. (…) Everyone wants to be well off. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to be well off. So I wish for YOU, for you to be well off! (D6)

29 Marek Prchal, who is responsible for his social media image and partook in Babiš’s book What I Dream Of When I Happen to be Sleeping (2017), Petr Topinka, who invented the main ANO party slogans, or Alexander Braun, who prepared the public opinion poll We Want Better Czechia. (Český rozhlas, 2017) 40

Intertextuality is present only in one of the analyzed discourses, when Babiš channels the authority of Václav Havel, citing his 1992 New Year's speech. However, instead of answering the existential question concerned with public discontent despite economic growth, the Prime Minister misinterprets it, offering a discourse reminiscent of the Normalization period which Havel was in fact caricaturing.30 Babiš asserts his authority particularly though modality and hedging, or the lack of the latter. Unlike the President, he uses high modality transmitting certainty, confidence and decisiveness: “We want to engage in specific action without lengthy and futile debate. (…) We must be more assertive in defending our interests in a unifying Europe” (D5). With the first-person plural he often includes himself in the appeal making it thus more compelling. He prefers shorter, even nominal, sentences to emphasize action, resoluteness, and results, using padding only when communicating something unpleasant.

Figure 2. Andrej Babiš thanking his marketing specialist Marek Prchal after ANO’s victory in the 2017 legislative election (Český rozhlas, 2017)

4.2.2 Domestic Policy

The centrality of the empty signifiers, the good people against the corrupt elite and the others, is evident from the analysis of the linguistic strategies employed in the populist discourses of both the President and the Prime Minister. In fact, already in his 2013 Inauguration Speech, Miloš Zeman declared wanting to be “the voice of the lower ten million

30 The message of the Prime Minister’s New Year’s speech will be further explored in the next chapters concerned with the domestic and foreign policy agendas. 41

underprivileged citizens, since the privileged ones have acquired their voice, or rather voices, already a long time ago.” He reiterated his promise in the 2018 Inauguration Speech:

(…) without the contact with citizens, the lower ten million if you will, the president is not worthy. A president, which considers himself a part of some chosen elite, is simply an ornament on a state building nothing more.

However, his concept of the people is quite exclusive as all the analyzed discourses demonstrate, including only his sympathizers. These are referred to as “normal citizens” doing “respectable jobs” (D1), who “do not let themselves be manipulated” (D2) specifically by the others, that is media, political adversaries, GAL, and civil society. Overall, this diverse group is repeatedly described as unsuccessful, clueless, and foolish, simply falling into the category of “The Better-People”:

(…) those who consider themselves better than the rest of us, who keep mentoring us on what to do and who regard their views superior to those of others. However, when we look at the structure of the “Better-People” community, we can see that, for example, media often consist of commentators who write about something else every day whilst understanding nothing. And these people want to advise us. The same applies to unsuccessful politicians, of course. (D1)

To further establish structural oppositions in his speeches the others are collectivized or anonymized, while those responding to the will of the people, such as the Government, are treated by names and titles. Even in the time of the coronavirus crisis, the President does not leave the social antagonism behind, as D3 and D4 show31. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, claims that his ANO party32 is here for everyone, which translates in its wide electoral base: “But I also want to involve you, all the citizens of our country.” (D6), “I am here for each of you at any time.” (D7), “Our government tries to think of all groups of the population.” (D8) At the same time, his policies target predominantly the young and the elderly, with the latter representing almost half of his voters33. As a unifying characteristic of his version of the people, Babiš accentuates the traditional notion of “Czech golden hands”

31 As usual, the President castigated the media and the political opposition, but also regular citizens suffering from the crisis. He controversially proclaimed in an interview that unsuccessful entrepreneurs should bankrupt, artists should starve to create their best artworks, and the unintelligent Prague elite should educate itself a bit reading now that the clubs closed (Zeman, 2020c). 32 The democratic character of the ANO party has been disputed as Andrej Babiš himself proclaimed in an interview for the British newspaper The Financial Times: “The party is connected to my person. The party is me.” (Foy, 2016) The fact that Babiš is the undisputed leader and that there is no opposition within his movement, has been proven by constant reelections and numerous members quietly leaving after discords (Robert Pelikán, Martin Stropnický, Ivan Pilný, Adriana Krnáčová, Karla Šlechtová, Pavel Telička). His most loyal collaborators, former Agrofert employees such as Jaroslav Faltýnek or Richard Brabec remain. 33 Despite initially presenting itself as a center-right party, ANO has attracted particularly in the 2017 legislative election the traditional voters of ČSSD and KSČM. Besides his left-wing policies, Babiš gained the support of pensioners thanks to his age, simple language and emphasis on topics such as “strong state, effective government, partial critique of the post-1989 conditions or cultural conservativeness, for example on the issue of migration” (Nádoba, 2019). 42

also elaborated in his 2017 book. The Prime Minister accuses the elite and the others, consisting of corrupt politicians and media, of leading a gross conspiracy “campaign” or “a political process” against his person (Buchert, 2019). Furthermore, he criticizes them for spreading negativism and fear among the people:

I know the opposition says that our national plan is unrealistic. Once again: the same skepticism, the negativism at all costs. (…) You often hear in the media that the global economy is cooling down and harder times are coming. That we can't manage all these plans. Someone is always trying to drum up fear with this. (D6)

All in all, the Prime Minister’s definition of the people and the elite can be summed up by the following statement posted on his Facebook profile before entering politics: “We are a talented nation. We are only governed by the inept” (Babiš, 2013).

The construction of social antagonism also pervades the President’s main agenda, as in both of his inaugural speeches he promises to fight the three “islands of deviation”: corruption, extremism, and media. Out of the three, Zeman criticizes media the most throughout his time in office (Naxera & Krčál, 2020, p. 94-95), for lying and manipulating the people (D1, D2, D3). Specifically, he repeatedly warns against the media owned by Zdeněk Bakala34, and the businessman himself, who represents the second “island of deviation”, corruption. Moreover, he often accuses the public television broadcaster, Česká televize35, of bias, of giving unlimited space to NGOs, but censuring him. As the first directly elected president, Zeman generally promotes direct democracy, as a way of fighting the corrupt elite by giving voice to the good people. That is why he also suggests the direct election of city and county representatives (D2), warning against clientelist structures on all political levels: “citizens, godfathers do not exist solely at central level, godfathers exist also at regional and communal level” (Zeman, 2017). Although civil activity including demonstrations are an integral part of democracy, as the society should have the right to express their discontent with the government, Zeman believes such behavior is undemocratic (D1, D2), claiming civil activists supposedly “cure their inferiority complex” in this way (2018). After participating in the elections, which the President considers the most legitimate demonstration of active citizenship (D1, D2), people should step aside and let the rules rule. Otherwise they are disrespecting the will of the voters. This points to Zeman’s minimalist understanding

34 Zdeněk Bakala, a Czech billionaire investigated for a series of corruption scandals, owns Hospodářské noviny, Respekt or Aktuálně.cz. 35 Zeman has referred to Česká televize pejoratively many times, calling the television station “a food conserve with rotten meat” in an interview for Parlamentní Listy (2017) or “a smelly cocktail” in the Barrandov TV show Week with the President (2018). 43

of democracy. Considering the President’s collaboration with the Prime Minister discussed above, Zeman reiterates support for Babiš’s government in all four discourses, agreeing on the promotion of digitalization and investment (D1, D2), and defending its COVID-19 measures. However, with the Prime Minister’s decreasing popularity due to the mishandling of the second wave of the coronavirus, President’s support seems to fade, which is indicated in D4: “I fully support the measures of the Government, although I think they could be communicated better sometimes”. Some journalists presume that the President even wished to replace the PM and put into place a caretaker government headed by the Minister of Health Prymula, which resulted in the Minister’s controversial replacement (Švehla, 2020; Dolejší & Stuchlíková 2020).

President Zeman: Domestic Policy Agenda D1 D2 D3 D4 I represent normal citizens with respectable jobs, who have their own head and do not let themselves be manipulated. Citizens should ignore “The Better People” (the media) because they do not understand anything. It is not democratic to demonstrate against a regime that was democratically elected. City and county representatives should be elected directly to avoid the formation of coalitions against the winner of elections. Elections are the most important part of democracy.

I support the Government and its vision. We should not be afraid of digitalization but embrace it as it could help speed up the state and thus simplify our lives.

Investments are the future, that is why I support the Government’s long-term plans. During the coronavirus crisis, it is important not to panic, follow the Government’s measures and listen to experts, not fake news.

Figure 3. President’s domestic policy agenda (own table)

As indicated above, the support of ANO and Andrej Babiš is not clearly conditioned by ideology, policy attitudes nor a specific social class. Instead, the Prime Minister offers his sympathizers deluded with traditional parties, effective businesslike solutions. The dichotomy between the slow party democracy dominated by inexperienced corrupt politicians and the more moral and straight-forward world of business the Prime Minister represents, summarized in the pre-election slogan of the ANO party, “We are not like politicians, we work hard”, is emphasized in all analyzed discourses: “We want to engage in specific action without lengthy and futile debate.” (D5), “I will impress upon the ministers to actively work with this plan” (D6), “The whole government is working non-stop in every possible way” (D7), “we’ve been working round the clock to tackle this unparalleled situation” (D8).

44

To achieve greater effectivity, Babiš suggests in his 2017 book and different interviews reforms of the Czech constitutional system, which would in fact weaken the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. These include:

Lowering the number of MPs in the lower chamber to 101 (instead of 200), introducing a first-past-the-post for elections to both chambers of the parliament; eventually abolishing the Senate (the upper parliamentary chamber); limiting parliamentary discussion; reducing the number of ministries; introducing referenda; abolishing regional administration; directly electing mayors; possibly abolishing local councils; and also strengthening the influence of the state on the public media. (Havlík, 2019, p. 380)

Furthermore, the Prime Minister continually stresses his openness and honesty when it comes to keeping promises (D1, D2, D3, D4). To demonstrate these qualities, he regularly posts about his hard work on social media, summarizing his weekly achievements in the informal video report “Hey, People”. The content of these videos and posts portraying the Prime Minister as one of the people36, but also as the one responsible for all the progress, is often problematic being taken out of context, incomplete, inconsistent or taking credit for someone else’s work. (Tvrdoň, 2019) Despite claiming to have a long-term vision for the Czech Republic, Babiš has focused predominantly on short-term populist policies, such as discounted train and bus fares for seniors and students, and the increases of pension and child benefits, thus keeping his word to invest in people (D5, D6). On the other hand, he has neglected the proposed long-term reforms, disinformed about the kilometers of highway constructed37, instead of the promised “balanced” government budget increased the deficit, among others (Břešťan, 2020). The Government also did not advance digitalization and the centralization of state services (D5, D6), as the coronavirus crisis revealed. During the pandemic, it repeatedly failed to clearly communicate a concrete plan. Relying on public opinion polls rather than specialists, and thus lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, the Czech Republic went from being “best in COVID” to one of the most affected countries in the world. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister sustained that “nobody could have been prepared for” the second wave of the pandemic (D8).

36 Besides presenting the Government’s program, the Prime Minister often mentions his personal life, talking of dogs, food, and family, to approximate the citizens. 37 In his New Year’s speech (D6), the Prime Minister claims: “Since I entered the cabinet, we have opened 91 kilometers of new motorways and started construction on a further 163 kilometers.” Nevertheless, since 2001, 70,1 km of new motorways were opened and the construction of a further 113 km was started (Demagog.cz, 2020). 45

Prime Minister Babiš: Domestic Policy Agenda D5 D6 D7 D8

ANO party/Government is for everyone. I am the ANO party/Government.

We particularly think of our children and seniors.

We are a small nation but with great talent and values.

We invest in people. We do not just talk about goals like other politicians, but we work hard to achieve them. I am open and honest; we keep our promises.

We build a lot, and reconstruct.

We support digitalization including centralized governmental services.

We offer a new long-term vision for a prosperous future of the Czech Republic. We will get through the coronavirus pandemic if we work together and follow the Government’s measures. During the coronavirus crisis, we made some mistakes because we could not be ready for this.

Figure 4. Prime Minister’s domestic policy agenda (own table)

4.2.3 Foreign Policy

For forty years in this day you have heard from the mouths of my predecessors in diverse version the same thing. How our country is flourishing, how many other billions of tons of steel we made, how we are all happy, how we trust our government and what beautiful perspectives open in front of us. I suppose, you did not elect me to his office, so that I too would lie to you. Our country is not flourishing. (…) The worst thing is, that we live in a corrupt moral environment. We fell ill morally since we got used to saying one thing and thinking another. We learned to believe in nothing, ignore one another, take only care of ourselves. (Havel, 1990)

In this way, President Havel reflects on the situation in Czechoslovakia post-transition in his first New Year’s speech, rejecting the lies told by the representatives of the communist regime and emphasizing the need of a national moral rebirth. Furthermore, he hopes to reinforce the country’s authority in the world through the promotion of humanist values, which still form the base of the Concept of the Czech Republic’s Foreign Policy (2017) as discussed in the Historical-Cultural Context chapter. Nevertheless, the analyzed discourses demonstrate that both the current Prime Minister and the President do not always act (or speak) in compliance with this official conception failing to harmonize the formulation of foreign policy even within the political representation, which results in the incoherent and unpredictable image of the country in the world. Overall, the discourse analysis reveals that the President and the Prime Minister concentrate mostly on domestic issues. In relation to NATO and the EU, they politicize predominantly the problem of migration and to a lesser 46

degree terrorism and ecology. The promotion of economic diplomacy appears to dominate over the protection of human rights and the environment. Both the Prime Minister and the President appreciate cooperation with the V4 countries, but their views diverge on the issue of the relations with Russia and China. As Vít Borčany e Vít Dostál (2018, p. 13) sum up, the Czech foreign policy has been lately characterized by indifference, absence of a long-term vision, egoism and even aggression towards other actors:

Its current creators deepen the Czech self-infatuation, which compromises the possibility to co-create rules of the international system and thus take advantage of the benefits the contemporary system brings to the smaller countries.

This tendency is confirmed in the message reiterated in most of the discourses, that the Czech Republic is doing better than the rest of the countries, and in the lack of international solidarity demonstrated during the migration and coronavirus crises. Due to the preference for pragmatism over moral values expressed in both the President and Prime Minister’s discourses, various commentators compared the leaders’ rhetoric to that of Gustáv Husák, last communist president of Czechoslovakia and the symbol of the Normalization period.

Zeman invites the Czech nation to enjoy the current economic growth and leave the “bad mood” behind, nevertheless his appeal is relatively more sober than that of the Prime Minister, addressing also potential economic problems due to the US-China Trade War, Brexit and labor shortage (D1, D2). During the coronavirus pandemic, the President did not showcase much international solidarity, portraying the Czech Republic as a country that is not doing as bad as the others: “Look at Sweden for example, there are now already over six thousand dead and I am not even talking of Israel” (D4), only thanking China for the delivery of medic supplies, Czechia in fact purchased: “I would like to thank the People's Republic of China, which has as the only country helped in the supply of these resources” (D3). Although the Parliament, respectively the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plays the principal role in the formulation of foreign policy, the Constitution grants the Head of State instruments to significantly influence it38: “I promise to strive to defend the national interests of the Czech Republic and its sovereignty in the area of migration as well as other areas. I promise that I will continue to support economic diplomacy” (D1). It is questionable whether Zeman’s

38 According to the article 63 of the Constitution, President of the Republic has the power to represent the State with respect to other countries, negotiate and ratify international treaties, receive, appoint, and recall heads of diplomatic missions. (Ústava ČR, 1993) 47

promotion of economic diplomacy particularly with China and Russia39 does not at times collide with his promise to defend national interests and security, considering the country’s integration in the Euro-Atlantic area. According to Zeman, migration is connected to Islamism, hence extremism, his first “island of deviation”, which represents a security and an ideological threat. In his 2017 Christmas message the President pleaded NATO to be more active in the fight against Islamic terrorism and reproached the EU for not being able to protect its borders. He reiterates this message, supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan and complimenting the activity of V4 that stood up to the incapable EU elite: “It managed to achieve the almost impossible. It successfully stopped the discussion about the nonsensical idea of migrant quotas” (D1). His criticism of the EU in confront with his praise of Russia and China, is expressed in the following statement for the Russian NTV40:

Russia has a strong leader, China has a strong leader, the United States have a strong leader. Please, find me a strong leader on the level of the European Union. I look left, I look right, I look straight, I look back — I simply do not see a strong leader. (Malát, 2018)

Figure 5. Miloš Zeman drinking a beer with Xi Jinping in Prague (AMO, 2016)

When it comes to China, Zeman hoped the Czech Republic would become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier of Chinese investment expansion” in Europe, paying multiple visits to the country, inviting the Chinese president Xi Jinping for the first time to Prague in 2016 despite

39 Zeman’s promotion of business deals with China and Russia is linked to the interests of the President’s controversial collaborators without security clearance, Chancellor Vratislav Mynář, and Martin Nejedlý connected to the Russian energy company Lukoil. Moreover, Jaroslav Tvrdík and Petr Kellner lobby for the Czech-Chinese relations. 40 In the same interview the President confirmed his opposition to the EU sanctions against Russia, as he had proclaimed the annexation of Crimea fait accompli. 48

public protests, and even appointing the chairman of CEFC Ye Jianming41 his honorary economic adviser (Barbosa, Santora & Stevenson, 2018). Although most of the promised Chinese investments did not materialize, President continues to defend Chinese interests, ridiculing the BIS reports warning of Chinese espionage through the Huawei Technologies: “the Chinese do carry out industrial espionage here. They come to the Czech Republic to investigate why our trains are so slow while theirs run at 300 km an hour” (D1).42 Finally, as his predecessor Klaus, Zeman is skeptical about global warming. He dismisses the European Green Deal as ideological and hurtful to economics, considering that the Czech Republic is still quite dependent on traditional energy sources (D2).

President Zeman: Foreign Policy Agenda D1 D2 D3 D4 We should rejoice from current economic growth but beware of potential problems.

I will defend national interests and sovereignty, and economic diplomacy. NATO should continue to fight Islamic terrorism and EU should protect its borders. Thanks to the V4, the migrant quotas were rejected. We should not accuse the Chinese of spying, but learn from them, as they are more technologically advanced. We should be grateful to China for their help during the coronavirus pandemic. The human impact on climate change is overrated, discussions of climate change are exaggerated and dangerous for the economy of the Czech Republic and the EU. During the coronavirus crisis, other countries are doing worse than us and we should be grateful to China for their help.

Figure 6. President’s foreign policy agenda (own table)

In all four analyzed discourses, even during the coronavirus pandemic, the Prime Minister aims to convince the citizens that the country is and will keep doing extremely well, particularly thanks to his Government:

We want to (…) do everything we can to improve our lot. (D5); We have an amazing time before us. We are the Czech Republic, a country for the future. (D6); We are doing very well. And I am sure we will see this through. (D7); We saved thousands of lives. That is why we coped with the first wave so well. (D8) This is consistent with his populist appeal built on competence, not ideology. Despite the favorable economic situation in Europe which influenced the growth of economy, the Babiš’s Government has increased its spending which cumulated in the highest deficit during the coronavirus pandemic. To further persuade the public of the Government’s achievements,

41 CEFC gained shares in several important Czech companies including the Lobkowicz Group, Travel Service, Médea Group, Empresa Media and bought the Slavia football club. Ye Jianming was arrested in China in 2018 and his company’s investments were moved to the state CITIC Group. 42 Despite the security threat, Zeman is also pushing the construction of a new unit at the nuclear power plant Dukovany by the Russian Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, which lately led to the cooling of relations with the Prime Minister. 49

Babiš often stresses the exceptionality of the Czech Republic regarding security, economic performance, and the reaction to the coronavirus crisis, in relation to other countries:

Our citizens live in a safe country, a blessing bestowed on few of the nations around us. (D5); We are growing. We are getting richer. More than most eurozone and European Union countries (D6); We are one of the few countries that did not miss the right moment to put in place strict measures to prevent the unrestrained spread of the disease. (D7); That was after we became one of the first countries in Europe to stop the spread of the disease. (D8) Although the Czech Republic is one of the safest countries in the world, as the Prime Minister himself claims, national security and the rejection of migrant quotas become top priorities of his Government (D5, D6). This agenda is also reflected in Babiš’s relationship with the European Union. Together with the V4 countries, he promotes Better Europe over More Europe, stressing strong Member States and depoliticization of the European Commission, the preservation of Schengen and protection of external borders. Although the country has fulfilled the criteria for joining the eurozone43, Babiš chooses to wait until the EU reforms (D5). Even though the Prime Minister presents himself as a more pro-European than the President, his rhetoric in fact encourages Euroscepticism44, fighting for membership benefits without responsibility-sharing:

One of this Government’s headline objectives is to fight for Czech citizens’ interests within the European Union (…) We must be more assertive in defending our interests in a unifying Europe. (…) We do not simply want to nod to Brussels, we want to change its policies. (D5); Our government confidently represents our country abroad. At the UN and in Brussels at the European Council (…) where I fight hard for Czech interests. (D6) Unlike Zeman, Babiš acknowledges the importance of climate change but argues that every country should device their energy mix, stressing the importance of nuclear energy in achieving carbon neutrality in the Czech Republic45 (D5, D6). Overall, the Prime Minister wants the Czech Republic to be “seen” in Europe, however, currently his previously mentioned conflict of interest is the most visible.

43 According to the annual report Evaluation of Fulfillment of the Maastricht Convergence Criteria and Degree of Economic Convergence of the Czech Republic with the Euro Area by the Ministry Finance and CNB (2018), the Czech Republic currently meets the public finance, interest rate convergence and price stability criteria. Nevertheless, the process of real economic convergence remains unfinished, as the local price and wage levels are still substantially below the older EU member states. 44 In the analyzed discourses addressed to the Czech citizens, Brussels is painted almost in opposition to the Czech Republic and its interests, however in other speeches particularly at conferences, the Prime Minister acknowledges the Czech co-creation of Brussels policies and the importance of the membership: “I don’t know what they mean, who is this Brussels, because we are part of this Brussels. (…) We are definitely not losing national sovereignty (…) I think it is useless to talk of how positive our membership in the European Union has been during those 15 years.” (Babiš, 2019) 45 When it comes to climate change, the Prime Minister’s attitude is also unclear, as he defends the European Green Deal at diverse conferences and in the EU but presents a much more of a skeptical view to the citizens: “I expect that Brussels will finally forget those green deals, which ruined our automotive industry or ruined the economics, those emission permits.” (Honzejk, 2020) 50

Prime Minister Babiš: Foreign Policy Agenda D5 D6 D7 D8 The country is doing extremely well, and it will be doing even better.

We are doing better than other countries of the EU.

National security and the rejection of the migration quotas are our top priorities.

We fight actively for national interests abroad, in the European Union.

We promote ecological policies.

Figure 7. Prime Minister’s foreign policy agenda (own table)

4.3 Impact of the New Discourse on the Arenas of Democracy

The change in official discourse characterized by illiberal tendencies indicated in the analysis of the President and Prime Minister’s speeches influenced the position of the Czech Republic in international democracy rankings. Since its origin in 2006, the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit has categorized the Czech Republic as a full democracy achieving generally an overall score of 8.19/10. After 2013, coinciding with the election of Miloš Zeman President and the entrance of Andrej Babiš and his ANO party into politics, the country’s ranking started dropping progressively, being demoted to a flawed democracy by 2014 and reaching the lowest score of 7.69/10 in the most recent 2019 index. Nevertheless, ranking 32nd in the world, Czechia is still doing better than the rest of the Central European region, with Slovakia taking 42nd, Hungary 55th, and Poland 57th place. With the sum of 5.64/7 points, the Czech Republic followed by Slovakia, is still classified as a consolidated democracy in the most recent Freedom House report. However, both countries are almost approaching the semi-consolidated democracy category to which the neighboring Poland has already been downgraded, with Hungary having declined to a transitional or hybrid regime. Similarly, as the Democracy Index, also the Nations in Transit detect a decrease in the Czech Republic’s democracy score following 2013, with a further drop after 2017. While both analyzed indices demonstrate that the Czech Republic is still doing better than its neighbors, it is a question whether the country will not follow down their path, considering the declining tendency of its democracy score since 2013. Nevertheless, despite the regional proximity and similar historical development, we must not neglect the significant differences in Poland and Hungary’s prior regime type and democratization, which unlike Czechoslovakia underwent a negotiated transition from an authoritarian communism in the case of the former and from mature post-totalitarianism in case of the latter (Linz & Stepan, 1996), and consequently the specific character of their current de-democratization 51

processes, particularly when it comes to the role of the religion in both of the national- conservative right-wing .

EIU's Democracy Index: Central Europe 10

9 8,19 8,19 8,19 8,19 8,17 8,06 7,94 7,94 7,82 8 7,62 7,69 7,69

7

6

5 2006 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Czech Republic Slovakia Poland Hungary

Figure 8. EIU’s Democracy Index scores of the Central European countries (own table)46

Freedom House's Nations in Transit: Central Europe 7 5,79 5,79 5,75 5,71 5,71 6 5,64

5

4

3

2

1

0 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Czech Republic Slovakia Poland Hungary

Figure 9. Freedom House’s Nations in Transit scores of the Central European countries (own table)47

46 Scores since 2006, when the Index was first published, with updates for 2008, 2010 and later years, retrieved from the most recent EIU’s Democracy Index report (2019). 52

In the analyzed years coinciding with Miloš Zeman’s presidency and Andrej Babiš’s accession to power, Democracy Index records a decrease in civil liberties, but also in the functioning of government. This decline points to the Prime Minister’s conflict of interests and issues with the formation of government. Furthermore, the scores reveal two constants, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation, weaknesses common for all the Eastern and Central European democracies. These aspects of democracy are continuously undermined by political instability and corruption scandals, which contribute to the decreasing popular faith in the political class and democracy overall. Moreover, illiberal political discourse and the politization of issues such as migration and terrorism encourage xenophobia and even racism in the population. The most recent EIU’s Democracy Index report adds that many CEE countries reject “liberal” democratic values giving preference to “strongmen” who bypass political institutions (2019, p. 17). Despite problems with media freedom suggested in the decline in civil liberties, the Czech Republic continues to have free and fair elections, which the high numbers regarding electoral process and pluralism confirm.

EIU'S DEMOCRACY INDEX: CZECH REPUBLIC

Electoral Functioning of Political Participation Political Culture Civil Liberties process and government

pluralism

9,58 9,58 9,58 9,58 9,58

9,41

8,82

8,53 8,53 8,53

7,14 7,14

6,88 6,88 6,88 6,88 6,88

6,79 6,79

6,67 6,67 6,67 6,67 6,67 6,43

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Figure 10. EIU’s Democracy Index scores of the Czech democracy arenas (own table)48

47 Scores since 2015, when Freedom House reversed its methodology (before rating 1 represented the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest), retrieved from https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit. 48 Table created based on the data available in the yearly EIU’s Democracy Index reports. The graph shows the years available in both analyzed indices, illustrating the drop in ratings in 2017. 53

When it comes to the Freedom House’s Nations in Transit reports, these tell a similar story. Electoral process rates highest, followed by local democratic governance, judicial framework and independence, and civil society. Nevertheless, as in the EIU’s Democracy Index, civil society suffers a decline in 2017 due to the impact of illiberal and far-right groups on the public discourse. Also the score of independent media, which has been low since 2014, when Babiš entered in office as Minister of Finance, decreased even more in 2020 to reflect the growing oligarchs’ influence in the sector49 and the continued attacks on the public broadcaster Česká televize. What more, Freedom House registered attempts at executive interference with the rule of law, specifically around the fraud investigation of the Prime Minister, which is manifested in the most recent judicial framework and independence score decline. Like the Democracy Index, also Freedom House indicates issues with government instability as the consistently low national democratic governance and corruption score show.

FREEDOM HOUSE'S NATIONS IN TRANSIT: CZECH REPUBLIC

Electoral Process National Democratic Governance Local Democratic Governance Judicial Framework and Independence Civil Society Independent Media

Corruption

6,75 6,75 6,75 6,75 6,75

6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25 6,25

6 6 6 6

5,25 5,25 5,25 5,25 5,25 5,25 5,25

5 5 5

4,5 4,5 4,5 4,5 4,5

2015 2016 2017 2018 + 2019 2020

Figure 11. Freedom House’s Nations in Transit scores of the Czech democracy arenas (own table)50

The diverse aspects of democracy rated by the examined indices could be translated into the five major arenas of a modern consolidated democracy introduced by Linz and Stepan (1996), consisting of civil society, political society, rule of law, state apparatus and economic

49 Freedom House refers to the already mentioned Babiš’s ownership of the country’s largest newspapers Mladá fronta DNES and Lidové noviny, but also to the recent acquisition of the largest Czech commercial broadcaster, TV NOVA, by the PPF group, owned by the wealthiest Czech entrepreneur, Petr Kellner. 50 Table created based on the data available at the Freedom House Nations in Transit website. The graph shows the years available in both analyzed indices, illustrating the drop in ratings in 2017.

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society. Considering the recent developments reflected in the rankings, we can conclude that the arena of political society has been affected the most thus far. Despite the preservation of free and inclusive electoral contestation, there is an evident lack of effective political leadership and a stable party system upholding democratic values. Due to clientelist structures, the gap between citizens and the political elite widened enabling the rise of populism and creating governmental instability. The emergent populist discourse has had a deteriorating effect on another arena, the civil society, which shows the problem of complementarity as “one of these two dimensions is frequently neglected in favor of the other” (Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 9). In fact, leaders such as Zeman and Babiš discredit the political elite promoting strongman leadership and majoritarian democracy. At the same time, they condemn critical civil society actors, particularly media and NGOs, as unelected elite, contributing to their decreasing public legitimacy. Through the mobilization of exclusive national identity, boosted by the ownership of important media outlets, they manage the win over a part of the public opinion. Nevertheless, the civil opposition remains strong, which was manifested in a series of successful demonstrations against the illiberal tendencies, with one “Million Moments for Democracy” protest becoming the largest since the Velvet Revolution. Neither the rule of law arena has been left intact, as the leading political actors attempt to disrespect the Constitution, however, unlike in the neighboring Poland or Hungary, constitutional changes have so far remained discursive. Although the Czech Republic is not experiencing stateness problems like other post-communist countries, the obsolete, slow, excessive state apparatus favoring corruption complicates both the governance and the lives of citizens, as the coronavirus pandemic uncovered. Finally, as “no single arena in such a system can function properly without some support from one, or often all, of the other arenas” (1996, p. 13), also the autonomy and competitiveness of economic society arena, which has been the emblem of transition success, has suffered from the accumulation of power in the Prime Minister’s hands.

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5. CONCLUSION: WILL “TRUTH PREVAIL” OVER THE ILLIBERAL CHALLENGE?

How we conceptualize democracy, favoring either minimalist or maximalist definitions, conditions how we explain a successful democratization or democratic backsliding. The theoretical part of this work demonstrated that democracy is a complex concept, difficult to define or measure, taking into account all its diverse subtypes. We adhere to the definition of Western democracy founded on the principles of constitutional liberalism. Without the respect of the rule of law and civil rights, democracy is reduced to its electoral characteristics risking “the tyranny of the majority”. Moreover, we must understand democratization and de-democratization as dynamic processes, for many countries today remain in the “gray zone”, and even consolidated democracies run the risk of reversal. The prototypical CEE backsliders, Poland, and Hungary, manifest that illiberalism can grow even inside a “successfully” institutionalized democracy. At the same time, we need not to reject all theoretical categories of though such as transition models, regime ideal-types or the democratic consolidation concept because of teleology, instead we may critically employ them as a framework that can help us organize the complex reality. Afterall, the limits of the early transitologist comparativist transition paradigms have been discussed extensively leading to a consensus among the transitologists themselves that rejects the idea of a single modernity emphasizing rather the formal and informal institutionalization of democracy. Furthermore, the uniqueness of the post-communist transitions revealed the relevance of preconditions for democracy, and particularly importance of historical-cultural context. Similarly, we cannot fall into the trap of a “reverse transition paradigm” when analyzing the recent democratic decline in the CEE region, acknowledging the countries’ diversity. Despite its recent popularity, democratic backsliding is not a new phenomenon having only become vaguer and more gradual. This illiberal process has been associated with the rise of populism, both anti-liberal and democratic thin-centered ideology based on the antagonism of “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”. As the EU conditionalities significantly impacted democratization in the post-communist countries, postfunctionalism sustains that the current (de)democratization processes in these now member states can negatively influence the course of the European integration owing to the clash between functional pressures and exclusive identity.

Thanks to its post-structuralist cross-disciplinary context-focused approach, the present investigation opted for a two-dimensional sub-systemic and systemic-level discourse analysis 56

to illuminate the recent distancing of the Czech Republic from the Acquis Communautaire, and generally from the country’s post-1989 official discourse. The incursion into the historical-cultural context revealed that the democracy decline in the Czech Republic is certainly not an isolated phenomenon, having been influenced by macro-structural conditions such as geopolitical changes, globalization, the development of the internet and social media, and the consequent disinformation campaigns, along with a series of external crises such as terrorist attacks, economic crises, the migrant crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the Czech populist leaders, similarly as their international counterparts, take advantage of the economic inequality, winners and losers of the globalization, and cultural backlash, GAL/TAN divide, created by these global trends. Although their populist appeal and their executive aggrandizement tendencies appear similar from the outside, there are fundamental differences in their narrative owing to specific regional and domestic experiences. Unlike its neighbors, Poland and Hungary, Czechoslovakia transitioned from the “frozen” post-totalitarianism-by-decay to democracy abruptly, through collapse after a series of mass demonstrations, and crucial international events. Václav Havel’s humanist program inspired by Tomáš G. Masaryk and his search for truth, along with the “Back to Europe” strategy shaped the Czech national discourse post-1989. Thus, also thanks to the preconditions for democracy, the country achieved consolidation quickly, which culminated in its integration in NATO and the EU. Nevertheless, the negative legacies of (post)totalitarianism reflected in a weak civil society and subservient political culture, coupled with the shortcomings of the transition, particularly the unregulated mass privatization, led to the spread of corruption and clientelist structures within the new political parties, alimenting a growing gap between the elite and citizens. Thus, the rise of the populist Andrej Babiš and Miloš Zeman should be understood as a consequence of all these developments, rather than the origin of the democracy crisis, which leads us to question the effective institutionalization of Czech democracy in the first place.

As for the character of the illiberal challenge, President Zeman works with the identity of an insider, whose age, studies, and experience in politics allow him to lecture the audience, employing a wide range of literary tropes and intertextuality, referencing for example Professor Masaryk. To assert his teacher-like authority in a non-superior way, he approximates the audience mixing in informal expressions, using lowered modality and the first person imperative. The Prime Minister’s outsider identity of a hard-working businessman, product of the country’s best marketing, is sustained by his empty corporate 57

speak consisting of English terms and statistics to designate performance, but also simple colloquial expressions creating the impression of “a dialogue between equals”, and finally high modality verbs and short nominal sentences indicating confidence and action. Both political leaders claim to defend the will of common working people against the corrupt elite, represented by their political opponents and the media, occasionally immigrants and Brussels, (in case of the President) GAL, and civil society. Except for the politization of security, migration and to a lesser degree ecology issues, their discourses are predominantly concerned with domestic policy, referencing other countries to illustrate how well the Czech Republic is doing in comparison. Due to the President’s controversial promotion of Russian and Chinese interests, together with Prime Minister volatile pro-Europeanism, the Czech Republic comes off as an unpredictable international player. Overall, the new discourse introduced by the current President and Prime Minister, is not so new after all, constructed on the national myths of the “Munique Syndrom” and the “Hussite stigma” feeding Czech geopolitical insecurity and exceptionalism respectively, employed by the former President Václav Klaus. Furthermore, their populist ideology relies on economic pragmatism rather than the higher moral ideals promoted by Masaryk and Havel or the Polish and Hungarian grand conservative-nationalist narrative, recalling the Normalization period discourse. Finally, neither of the two current leaders presents a coherent, long-term vision for the Czech Republic, but they rather build their appeal around the construction of social antagonism, short-term goals, and a minimalist conception of democracy. They emphasize the importance of elections and promote aspects of direct democracy, but also attempt to dismantle checks and balances, and centralize power in their hands. These growing illiberal tendencies have been registered in the democracy rankings of EIU and Freedom House, particularly in the low scores when it comes to the functioning of the government and political participation, and but also in the decrease in civil liberties, the independence of media and the rule of law. Owing to the lack of a truly democratic leadership, political instability and corruption, political society seems to be suffering the most, nevertheless the trend underlines the interconnectedness of all the democracy arenas.

Considering the above cited findings, we may conclude that the empirical investigation overall confirmed our research hypotheses. As for our first research question, which aimed to identify the origins and character of the retreat of democracy in the Czech Republic, the sub-systemic-level discourse analysis validated that the current Prime Minister Babiš and President Zeman, managed to rise to power, and gradually implement “executive 58

aggrandizement”, effectively thanks to the mobilization of exclusive identity as a consequence of a series of internal and external crises, which originated the dislocation of the official post-transition discourse. Bearing in mind the thorough inspection of the political leaders’ rhetoric and agenda, we may characterize the illiberal challenge as populist, but we cannot categorize both Babiš and Zeman unequivocally as TAN forces, as in the case of their Hungarian and Polish counterparts. Contrasting the EIU’s and Freedom House’s international democracy rankings in the systemic-level part of our empirical investigation, we answered the second research question focused on indicating which arenas of democracy have been the most affected and why by the crisis. Based on the compared scores, we verified that, in fact, the arena of political society has been affected the most so far, with no democracy arena persisting intact, due to the accumulation of economic, political and media power in the hands of the Prime Minister and the President’s attempts at stretching his constitutional powers. However, as their suggested system alterations have remained mostly discursive, also thanks to the critical opposition in form of the Senate, civil society and media, there is hope that “truth will prevail” over this illiberal challenge. Nonetheless, democracy in the Czech Republic is clearly in need of a revitalization, when it comes to political leadership, party-system, state apparatus but also civil society.

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Zeman, M. (2017a). Rozhovor prezidenta republiky pro pořad TV Barrandov „Týden s prezidentem“. Retrieved from https://www.hrad.cz/cs/prezident-cr/soucasny-prezident- cr/vybrane-projevy-a-rozhovory/rozhovor-prezidenta-republiky-pro-porad-tv-barrandov- tyden-s-prezidentem-12-13456

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7. APPENDIX 7.1 Discourse Analysis of the President Miloš Zeman

In order to characterize the President’s agenda and rhetorical strategies, with a special focus on the construction of social antagonism, and thus uncover the changes in the official Czech discourse and its impact on democracy, the following four discourses were analyzed:

D1: Christmas Message of the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman (26/12/2018), original Czech title: Vánoční poselství prezidenta republiky Miloše Zemana

D2: Christmas Message of the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman (26/12/2019), original Czech title: Vánoční poselství prezidenta republiky Miloše Zemana

D3: The Address of the President of the Czech Republic to the Nation (18/03/2020), original Czech title: Projev prezidenta republiky k národu

D4: The Address of the President of the Czech Republic to the Nation (16/10/2020), original Czech title: Projev prezidenta republiky k národu

President Zeman: Agenda Message Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Interpretation I represent normal D1: „(…) i nadále se budu, a D1: “(…) I promise that I will The centrality of the citizens with to velmi rád, setkávat s continue meeting normal empty signifiers “the respectable jobs, normálními občany tváří v citizens face-to-face, and that good people” against who have their own tvář během mých výjezdů po with utmost pleasure, during “the corrupt elite” in head and do not let jednotlivých krajích. (…) aby my tours into the regions. (…) Zeman’s populist themselves be v příštím roce za vámi zůstala your leaving behind program. However, his manipulated. úctyhodná práce, které si druzí respectable work which others concept of “the lidé budou vážit.“ will appreciate.” people” is quite D2: „Chtěl bych vám všem D2: “I would like to wish exclusive as it includes popřát, abyste i nadále byli everyone, to keep on being only his sympathizers, svobodnými osobnostmi, které free people, which form their while labeling others si vytvářejí svůj vlastní názor own opinion and do not let negatively. This is true a nenechají se nikým themselves be manipulated by even in crisis, as the manipulovat. Abyste si vážili anyone. To have respect for D3 and D4 sami sebe právě proto, že máte yourselves precisely because demonstrate. vlastní informovaný názor.“ you have your own informed opinion.” D3: „Nesmírně vítám D3: “I welcome immensely spontánní aktivity spontaneous activities of dobrovolníků, kteří se voluntaries who get together sdružují, aby pomohli svým to help their fellow citizens spoluobčanům (…) Dokonce i (…) Even actors, some of herci, z nichž někteří si whom complained they didn’t stěžovali, že nemají kšefty, by have gigs, would do better if udělali lépe, kdyby například they would for example visit a navštívili domovy důchodců a retirement home and bring přinesli tam trochu radosti.“ some happiness there.”

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D4: „Jsme v situaci, kdy o D4: “We are in a situation, lidské životy bojují naši when our medics are fighting zdravotníci a já bych jim chtěl for human lives and I would vyjádřit úctu, obdiv a like to express my respect, poděkování. Ale o lidské admiration and thanks to životy může bojovat každý z them. But everyone of us may nás.“ fight for human lives. ” I support the D1: „Chtěl bych poděkovat D1: “I would like to thank the This reiterated Government and its předsedům tří politických leaders of the three political message reflects the vision. stran, kteří našli odvahu k parties - Andrej Babiš, Jan President’s vytvoření a podpoře takové Hamáček and Vojtěch Filip, collaboration with PM vlády, Andreji Babišovi, Janu who found the courage to Babiš since his double Hamáčkovi a Vojtěch Filipovi. create and support such a appointment (and Vládě přeji úspěch v její práci government. I wish our new Babiš’s endorsement (…).“ government success in its of Zeman’s reelection). work (…).” However, Zeman’s D2: „Teď bych pochválil D2: “Now I would like to support of Babiš vládu za to, že předložila compliment the Government decreases during the národní investiční plán s to presenting a national coronavirus crisis. horizontem 30 let, protože investment plan with the některé velké projekty horizon of 30 years, since samozřejmě přesahují funkční some large projects exceed the období jakékoliv vlády.“ term in office of any government.” D3: „V tomto prohlášení jsem D3: “In that statement I fully plně podpořil vládu České supported the Government of republiky v jejich opatřeních.“ the Czech Republic in their measures.” D4: „Plně podporuji opatření D4: “I fully support the vlády, i když si myslím, že measures of the Government, někdy mohla být lépe although I think they could be komunikována.“ communicated better sometimes.” Elections are the D1: „Demokracie, to nejsou D1: “Democracy does not Unlike the media or most important part jenom práva. Demokracie, to mean just rights. Democracy other activities of civil of democracy. jsou i povinnosti. Já also means duties. I have long society Zeman dlouhodobě doporučuji, opět recommended that we return promotes the po vzoru první republiky, to the practice of the First participation in abychom se vrátili k myšlence Republic and to the idea of a elections in all his povinné volební účasti, která mandatory voter turnout, speeches, even není časově náročná, ale která which is not time consuming, suggesting that by výrazně rozšířila počet but it would significantly elections become voličů, a tím přinutila increase the number of voters obligatory. politické strany k vyšší and force political parties to (minimalist concept of aktivitě.“ increase their activity democracy) thereby.” D2: „V parlamentní D2: “In a parliamentary demokracii, kterou jsme a democracy, which we are and budeme, premiéři přicházejí a we will be, the prime odcházejí na základě výsledku ministers come and go based svobodných voleb.“ on the results of free elections.”

City and county D1: „Mnohdy se stává, že D1: “It often happens that the Zeman promotes representatives vítěz voleb je obejit a že winner is eliminated, and a direct democracy as a should be elected vzniká koalice proti tomuto coalition is formed against way of fighting the directly to avoid vítězi. Nepokládám to za such a winner. In my opinion, corrupt elite. He the formation of správné, považuji to za this is not right, and I consider repeatedly warns coalitions against obcházení vůle voličů. Co it a circumvention of the against clientelist

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the winner of proti tomu dělat, abychom jen voters' will. What shall stop us structures on all elections. nelamentovali. Dlouhodobě whining about it? I have long political levels, navrhuji přímou volbu jak been suggesting the including regional and starostů, tak primátorů, tak introduction of the direct vote communal. hejtmanů, a to tak, že jimi jsou of both mayors and regional zvoleni ti, kdo na kandidátce council presidents, so that the nejúspěšnějšího kandidujícího candidate with the largest subjektu dostali největší počet number of preferential votes preferenčních hlasů.“ on the winning candidate list would be automatically elected to this position.” It is not democratic D1: „(…) demonstrovat za D1: “(…) I see the Zeman believes that and hysterical to svržení, tedy demisi vlády v demonstration to overthrow a civil activity, such as demonstrate podmínkách svobodných government created after free demonstrations, is against a regime voleb podle mého názoru elections contemptuous of undemocratic. After that was pohrdáním vůlí voličů. Já voters´ will. I would just like expressing their active democratically bych jen chtěl připomenout to recall two Masaryk’s citizenship in the elected. dva Masarykovy citáty. První, quotes. First, we already have election, people should tož demokracii již máme, teď democracy; now we need step aside and let the ještě nějaké ty demokraty. some democrats. A democrat rules rule. Demokrat je ten, kdo respects the outcome of free respektuje výsledky elections, even if they do not svobodných voleb, i když se like it. The second quote goes, mu třeba nelíbí. Druhý citát being upset is not a political zní, rozčilení není program.“ program.”

D2: „Povšiml jsem si rovněž D2: “I also noticed the demonstrací v Praze, jejichž demonstrations in Prague, účastníci vyžadovali demisi whose participants demand the ministerského předsedy. Na to demission of the Prime se dá odpovědět velice Minister. That can be stručně. V parlamentní answered quite briefly. In a demokracii, kterou jsme a parliamentary democracy, budeme, premiéři přicházejí a which we are and we will be, odcházejí na základě výsledku prime ministers come and go svobodných voleb.“ based on the results of free elections.” Citizens should D1: „(…) televize, dále tištěná D1: “(…) television, printed Although the media ignore “The Better média, dále neziskové media, non-profit represent the third People” because organizace a konečně církev organizations, and finally the “island of deviation”, they do not asi s 25 procenty Church came last with about which Zeman understand důvěryhodnosti. (…) 25 per cent of credibility. (…) promised to fight anything. Lepšolidé jsou ti, kteří se The Better-People are those against (in both of his považují za něco lepšího než who consider themselves Inaugural Speeches, my ostatní a kteří nám better than the rest of us, who 2013 and 2018), he neustále radí, co máme dělat, a keep mentoring us on what to criticizes it the most kteří své názory považují za do and who regard their views throughout his time in nadřazené názorům těch superior to those of others. office, for lying to the druhých. Když se ovšem na However, when we look at the people. Ha warns strukturu lepšolidí podíváme, structure of the “Better- against the media tak vidíme, že například People” community, we can owned by Zdeněk sdělovací prostředky jsou see that, for example, media Bakala and the public mnohdy složeny z often consist of commentators television station, komentátorů, kteří každý den who write about something Česká televize. píší o něčem jiném, a přitom else every day whilst pořádně ničemu nerozumí. A understanding nothing. And tito lidé nám chtějí radit. (…) these people want to advise ignorujte radílky, kteří sami v us. (…) ignore the smart životě nedokázali nic. alecks who have yet to prove 72

themselves.”

D2: „Chtěl bych vám všem D2: “I would like to wish popřát, abyste i nadále byli everyone, to keep on being svobodnými osobnostmi, které free people, which form their si vytvářejí svůj vlastní názor own opinion and do not let a nenechají se nikým themselves be manipulated by manipulovat.“ anyone.” D3: „Nevšímejte si příliš D3: “Do not mind too much poštěkávání a vřeštění našich the barking and screeching of novinářských komentátorů, our news commentators, who, kteří jako obvykle píší o všem as usual, write about a nerozumí ničemu. “ everything and understand nothing.” We should rejoice D1: „Všichni jsme se radovali D1: “We were and we still are Like the PM, also the from current a dosud radujeme nad enjoying a steady economic President invites the economic growth ekonomickým růstem. Dnes growth. Today, for the first population to enjoy but beware of poprvé bych chtěl naopak time, I would like to warn you the positive economic potential problems. poněkud varovat, varovat před against a deceleration of the situation, but zpomalením ekonomického economic growth which might simultaneously warns růstu, které má několik příčin. be coming for several reasons. against potential Zaprvé je to vznikající First, it is the emerging trade problems. Throughout obchodní nebo celní válka and customs war between the his terms, Zeman has mezi dvěma největšími two world’s largest promoted economic světovými ekonomikami, tj. economies, the USA and diplomacy particularly americkou a čínskou. Zadruhé China. The second reason is through business deals je to brexit, ale zatřetí je to the Brexit. Third, the shortage with Russia and China. také to, že náš ekonomický of skilled labor force is Also, he has criticized růst brzdí nedostatek hindering our economic the effort to pracovních sil.“ growth.” completely replace D2: „vítejte v úspěšné zemi, D2: “welcome to a successful traditional energy with zemi, která má nejnižší míru country, country, which has renewable sources. nezaměstnanosti v Evropské the lowest unemployment rate unii, která má stabilní in the European Union, which ekonomický růst, která má has a stable economic growth, relativně klesající a poměrně which a relatively decreasing nízký státní dluh, zemi, kde and quite low state debt, roste jak průměrná mzda, tak country where the average starobní důchody. Toto vše wage as well as retirement jsou úspěchy. A i když o nás income are growing. All these češích se říká, že jsme are achievements. And nejskeptičtější národ v Evropě, although the Czechs are called myslím si, že nad těmito the most skeptical nation in úspěchy bychom se měli Europe, I think that we should společně radovat. To rejoice together at these samozřejmě neznamená, že by successes. That does not mean neexistovaly problémy (…)“ that there would not be any problems (…)” We should not be D1: „Dlouhodobé řešení vidím D1: “I see the long-term Digitalization and afraid of ke zvýšení produktivity práce, solution in the increase of Investment appear to digitalization but a to konkrétně formou work productivity, in be the two topics embrace it as it robotizace. (…) Považuji za particular via robotic promoted by both the could help speed nesmyslné, abychom této automation. (…) I find it PM and the President. up the state and tendenci bránili.“ pointless to resist this thus simplify our tendency.”

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lives. D2: „Pomalost. Pomalost D2: “Slowness. Slowness of soudních řízení, pomalost legal proceedings, slowness of stavebních řízení, pomalost construction proceedings, výstavby dopravní slowness of transport infrastruktury.“ infrastructure development.” Investments are the D1: „Závěrem ekonomické D1: “To conclude the future, that is why I části bych chtěl vysoce ocenit economic part, I would like to support the vládní návrh Národního highly appreciate the Government’s long investičního plánu government's 12-year National term plans. rozpočítaného na 12 let (…) Investment Plan proposal (…) jedině investice, i když nemají only investments carry us to volební právo, nás přenášejí the future, even if they have do budoucnosti.“ no suffrage.” D2: „Teď bych pochválil D2: “Now I would like to vládu za to, že předložila compliment the Government národní investiční plán s to presenting a national horizontem 30 let, protože investment plan with the některé velké projekty horizon of 30 years, since samozřejmě přesahují funkční some large projects exceed the období jakékoliv vlády.“ term in office of any government.” NATO should D1: „Pokud jsme o D1: “You know that within According to Zeman, continue to fight Severoatlantickou alianci, víte, the NATO I have long and migration is connected Islamic terrorism že dlouhodobě plně podporuji fully supported our to Islamism, and hence and EU should naše zahraniční mise v rámci participation in foreign extremism, his first protect its borders. boje proti mezinárodnímu missions against the “island of deviation”, Thanks to the V4, islámskému terorismu, international Islamic which represents a the migrant quotas zejména pak v Afghánistánu. terrorism, especially in security and an were rejected. (…) Co se týče Evropské unie, Afghanistan. (…) As far as the ideological threat. That velice si vážím činnosti European Union is concerned, is why NATO should Visegrádské skupiny. Té se I highly appreciate the be more active in the podařilo téměř nemožné, activities of the Visegrad fight against Islamic dosáhnout toho, že už se v Group. It managed to achieve terrorism and the EU zásadě přestalo diskutovat o the almost impossible. It in the protection of its nesmyslné myšlence successfully stopped the borders. V4 stood up migračních kvót. discussion about the to the “incapable EU nonsensical idea of migrant transnational elite”, quotas. defending national interests and security. We should not D1: „Číňani tady opravdu D1: “the Chinese do carry out The President has, at accuse the Chinese provádějí technologickou industrial espionage here. various occasions, of spying, but learn špionáž, oni se sem jezdí They come to the Czech promoted Chinese from them, as they seznamovat s tím, proč naše Republic to investigate why interests above the are more vlaky jezdí tak pomalu, když our trains are so slow while Czech national technologically jejich vlaky jezdí 300 km/h.“ theirs run at 300 km an hour.” interest, criticizing the advanced. D3: „Chtěl bych proto D3: “I would like to thank the Security Service’s We should be poděkovat Čínské lidové People's Republic of China, reports warning of the grateful to China republice, která nám jako which has as the only country Chinese threats (the for their help jediná země pomohla v helped in the supply of these Huawei case). Also, he during the dodávce těchto prostředků.“ resources.” has repeatedly thanked coronavirus China for sending pandemic. (purchased) supplies amid the first coronavirus wave.

I will defend D1: „budu usilovat o obranu D1: “I promise to strive to It is questionable national interests národních zájmů České defend the national interests of whether the and sovereignty republiky a její suverenity jak the Czech Republic and its President’s promotion (migration), and v oblasti migrace, tak v sovereignty in the area of of economic economic oblastech dalších. Slibuji, že i migration as well as other diplomacy with China 74

diplomacy. nadále budu podporovat areas. I promise that I will and Russia does not at ekonomickou diplomacii, a to continue to support economic times collide with his jak náš vývoz do zahraničí, tak diplomacy, both our export promise to defend příliv efektivních zahraničních abroad and the inflow of national interests and investic k nám.“ effective foreign investments security (the country’s to our country.” pledge to promote human rights and its Euro-Atlantic integration).

The human impact D2: „Domnívám se, že z D2: “I believe that the Similarly, as his on climate change diskuzí o klimatických discussions about climate predecessor Klaus, is overrated, změnách se stává nové change are becoming a new Zeman is skeptical discussions of náboženství, a dovolte mi religion, and allow me then to about global climate change are proto, abych byl kacířem. (…) be a heretic. (…) I am not sure warming. He exaggerated and Nejsem si jist, zda whether human activity is a dismisses the dangerous for the rozhodujícím faktorem decisive the factor of global European Green Deal economy of the globálního oteplení je právě warming, or rather natural as ideological and Czech Republic lidská činnost, a nikoli laws, the movement of the hurtful to economics, and the EU. přírodní zákony, pohyb Earth’s axis and other cosmic considering that the zemské osy a další kosmické effects.” Czech Republic is still vlivy.“ quite dependent on traditional energy sources. During the D3: „abyste se vyhnuli dvěma D3: “try to avoid two Besides clearly coronavirus crisis, extrémům. Ten první spočívá extremes. The first consists in criticizing people it is important not v tom, že tuto epidemii budete playing down the epidemy. disrespecting the to panic, follow the zlehčovat. Například jakýsi For example, some theatre Government’s Government’s divadelní principál zcela manager quite recently measures (promoting measures and listen nedávno prohlásil, že proclaimed, that coronavirus soldierlike measures to experts, not fake koronavirus je jenom lehká is just a light flu and criticized but not a full news. chřipka, a kritizoval opatření Government’s measures. The lockdown) and vlády. Ten druhý extrém pak other extreme then consists in spreading fake news, spočívá v tom, že propadnete sinking into panic and fear. the president did not panice a strachu. (…) A o to (…) Pay even greater attention strife to unite the větší pozornost věnujte radám to the advice of specialists, nation during the odborníků, které vám mohou which can help you.” crisis, but triggered pomoci.“ more social D4: „Máme k dispozici jenom D4: “We have only one antagonism, jednu jedinou zbraň, protože weapon at our disposal since criticizing media and vakcína ještě neexistuje. Touto the vaccine does not yet exist. the political opposition zbraní je malý kousek látky, A small piece of fabric is that as usual, but also který si přivěsíme na obličej a weapon which we hang on our regular citizens který nás chrání před nákazou face and which protects us suffering from the a naopak my chráníme druhé against the contagion and vice crisis. před touto nákazou. (…) versa we protect others against Ignorujte názory těchto lidí, this contagion. (…) Ignore the protože nejsou odborné, a opinions of these people věřte odborníkům, protože because they are not expert, jedině ti nám mohou pomoci.“ and trust the specialists, because only those can help us.” During the D3: „Chtěl bych proto D3: “I would like to thank the Similarly as the PM, coronavirus crisis, poděkovat Čínské lidové People's Republic of China, the President did not other countries are republice, která nám jako which has as the only country take much advantage doing worse than jediná země pomohla v helped in the supply of these of the pandemic to us and we should dodávce těchto prostředků.“ resources.” showcase international be grateful to solidarity, repeatedly

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China for their D4: „Podívejte se třeba na D4: “Look at Sweden for appreciating only help. Švédsko, tam už je teď přes example, there are now China’s help with the šest tisíc mrtvých, a to already over six thousand dead medic supplies (CR nemluvím o Izraeli. and I am not even talking of purchased), otherwise Israel.” portraying the Czech Republic as a country that is not doing as bad as the others.

Figure 12. Discourse analysis of the President’s agenda (own table)

President Zeman: Rhetorical Strategies Figures of speech Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Interpretation Lexical choices and D1: primitivní hlupáci; D1: primitive fools; ignore the The President mixes genre of ignorujte radílky, kteří sami v smart alecks who have not informal (sometimes communication životě nedokázali nic; milí achieved anything in life; dear vulgar) and formal přátelé friends (even literary, Latin) D2: Víte, co to jsou v tomto D2: Do you know who the lexicons to create an smyslu parašutisti? To jsou parachutists are in this sense? impression of a lidé, kteří jsou na kandidátku They are people, who are “dialogue between shozeni shora; zlostně thrown on the candidate list equals”, but his nadávají from the top; they grumble relation to the angrily audience sounds D3: poštěkávání a vřeštění D3: barking and screeching of often rather superior, našich novinářských our news commentators; actors, as that of a teacher komentátorů; herci, z nichž some of whom complained they explaining something někteří si stěžovali, že nemají didn’t have gigs to students and kšefty occasionally D4: Ignorujte názory těchto D4: Ignore the opinions of these rebuking them. lidí, protože nejsou odborné people, because they are not expert Overlexicalisation: D1: Nesmírně si toho vážím a D1: I deeply appreciate it and I Zeman employs epistrophe, slibuji, že i nadále budu promise to strive to defend the repetition tools often epizeuxis usilovat o obranu národních national interests of the Czech to build up the zájmů České republiky a její Republic and its sovereignty in emotional intensity suverenity jak v oblasti the area of migration as well as of the message. In migrace, tak v oblastech other areas. I promise that I will the case of the dalších. Slibuji, že i nadále continue to support economic redundant expression budu podporovat diplomacy, both our export “normal citizens”, ekonomickou diplomacii, a to abroad and the inflow of the populist content jak náš vývoz do zahraničí, tak effective foreign investments to is clear. příliv efektivních zahraničních our country. Finally, I promise investic k nám. A konečně that I will continue meeting slibuji, že i nadále se budu, a normal citizens face-to-face, to velmi rád, setkávat s and that with utmost pleasure, normálními občany tváří v during my tours into the tvář během mých výjezdů po regions. jednotlivých krajích. D2: Pomalost. Pomalost D2: Slowness. Slowness of legal soudních řízení, pomalost proceedings, slowness of stavebních řízení, pomalost construction proceedings, výstavby dopravní slowness of transport infrastruktury.(…) Chtěl bych infrastructure development. (…) vám popřát bolest. Ale víte, I would like to wish you pain. jakou bolest? Takovou bolest, But you know what kind of o které mluvil Tomáš pain? That type to pain Tomáš Masaryk, když řekl, myšlení Masaryk spoke of, when he 76

bolí. said, thinking is painful.

D3: Přál bych vám, abychom D3: I wish that we would love se měli rádi, abychom k sobě each other, that we would be byli laskaví a vstřícní, kind-hearted and forthcoming to abychom pomáhali jeden one another, that we would help druhému a abychom dokázali each other and that we would v této těžké době svoji manage to show our humanity lidskost. in this difficult time. D4: Roste počet nakažených D4: The number of infected by koronavirem, roste počet the coronavirus is growing, the hospitalizovaných, roste počet number of hospitalized is těžce nemocných a co horšího, growing, the number of the roste počet mrtvých. seriously ill is growing and what is worse, the number of dead is growing. Neologisms D1: Lepšolidé, špionománie D1: The Better-People, President employs spymania neologisms in a pejorative sense, D2: Klimatičtí proroci D2: The Climate Prophets mostly to characterize “the D4: Antirouškaři D4: The Anti-Mask People other”, and thus to further divide the society. Intertextuality, D1: Já bych jen chtěl D1: I would just like to recall The President takes references připomenout dva Masarykovy two Masaryk’s quotes. First, we advantage of citáty. První, tož demokracii already have democracy; now intertextuality to již máme, teď ještě nějaké ty we need some democrats. (…) show off his demokraty. (…) Druhý citát The second quote goes, being intelligence, humour, zní, rozčilení není program. upset is not a program. and adopt the D2: Takovou bolest, o které D2: That type of pain, which identities of others, mluvil Tomáš Masaryk, když Tomáš Masaryk spoke of when like the first řekl, myšlení bolí. he said, thinking is painful. President of D4: Dovolte mi, abych vám D4: Allow me to remind you of Czechoslovakia připomněl krásnou větu z a beautiful phrase from Talmud, Masaryk, but also the Talmudu, ten, kdo zachránil the one who saved one human famous Czech jeden lidský život, zachránil life, saved the entire enterpreneur Tomáš celé lidstvo. humankind. Baťa. Rhetorical tropes: D1: jak říkají mafiáni, D1: as the Mafia puts it, a Similarly, as metaphors, similes předložit nabídku, která se proposition which cannot be intertextuality, etc. neodmítá; skočila blbá nálada refused; the “bad mood” was Zeman uses various over rhetorical tropes to D2: Víte, co to jsou v tomto D2: Do you know who the make his speeches smyslu parašutisti? To jsou parachutists are in this sense? more compelling, lidé, kteří jsou na kandidátku They are people, who are literary sounding and shozeni shora; prosím, thrown on the candidate list even popular abychom nezůstávali v from the top; please, let’s not (employing proverbs bublinách svých názorů; remain inside the bubble of our to demonstrate his myšlení bolí ideas; thinking is painful knowledge of the D3: když teče do lodi voda, D3: when the boat is leaking, all Czech language and musí všichni k pumpám hands to the pumps approximate the D4: Máme k dispozici jenom D4: We have only one weapon audience). jednu jedinou zbraň, protože at our disposal since the vaccine Sometimes he used vakcína ještě neexistuje. Touto does not yet exist. A small piece metaphors to abstract zbraní je malý kousek látky. of fabric is that weapon. (…) details. (…) Povolali jsme do zbraně We called up to arms the victor vítěze nad první vlnou over the first wave of koronaviru. (…) až usedne coronavirus. (…) When the dust prach na bojišti, budeme sčítat settles, we will count our gains 77

zisky a ztráty and losses. Individualisation D1: předsedům tří politických D1: the leaders of the three The President makes (honorifics) vs stran, kteří našli odvahu k political parties - Andrej Babiš, use of these figures collectivisation vytvoření a podpoře takové Jan Hamáček and Vojtěch Filip, of speech in the (anonymisation) vlády, Andreji Babišovi, Janu who found the courage to create subtle construction Hamáčkovi a Vojtěch Filipovi and support such a government of social antagonism, vs ti, kdo nás neustále varují vs those who constantly warn us as the individuals před špiony, z nás tak trochu of spies, try to make us responding to the dělají nesvéprávné a incapable beings, easy to will of “the people” manipulovatelné bytosti, které manipulate and lacking the (Zeman’s se nedokáží samy ubránit capacity to protect ourselves sympathizers, the D2: paní ministryně místního D2: Ms. Minister of Regional Government) are rozvoje Klára Dostálová Development Klára Dostálová referred to by names předloží návrh nového presents a proposal of a new and titles, while the stavebního zákona, který construction law, which will bad elite and the stavební řízení urychlí, a je-li speed up the construction others (Opposition, kritizována, tak je někdy proceedings, and if she is Media, Civil Society, kritizována právě těmi, kdo criticized, then she is sometimes GAL and more) are přispěli k jeho pomalosti criticized by those who collectivized, often contributed to its slowness anonymized. D3: podpořil vládu České D3: supported the Government republiky vs jakýsi divadelní of the Czech Republic vs some principál theatre manager D4: Nenechte se svést lidmi, D4: Do not let yourselves be kteří sice o epidemii vůbec nic misled by people who know nevědí, ale kvůli mediální nothing of the epidemy, but are pozornosti jsou ochotni říkat willing to say things that harm věci, které poškozují naši our society for the media’s společnost vs vítěze nad první attention vs the victor over the vlnou koronaviru, pana first wave of coronavirus, Mr. profesora Prymulu Professor Prymula Modality D1: Chtěl bych ze srdce D1: I would like to thank Throughout his - I would like poděkovat všem občanům, cordially to all the citizens who discourses, the to, believe, kteří mi dali svůj hlas. (…) gave me their vote. (…) I would President uses allow me to, I Chtěl bych poděkovat like to thank the leaders of the lowered modality think we předsedům tří politických three political parties (…) Now most often, to assert should, I am stran (…) Nyní mi dovolte, allow me to move on to the his authority in a not sure if abych přešel k ekonomické economic situation. sincere and educated - Let’s situaci. way. His last D2: Myslím si, že nad těmito D2: I think that we should discourse is more úspěchy bychom se měli rejoice together at these assertive, but still společně radovat successes (…) I believe that the polite sounding, as (…)Domnívám se, že z discussions about climate he uses first person diskuzí o klimatických change are becoming a new plural imperative změnách se stává nové religion and allow me then to be considering himself náboženství, a dovolte mi a heretic. (…) I am not sure part of the audience. proto, abych byl kacířem whether human activity is a Nejsem si jist, zda decisive the factor of global rozhodujícím faktorem warming, or rather natural laws, globálního oteplení je právě the movement of the Earth’s lidská činnost axis and other cosmic effects. D3: Chtěl bych vás proto D3: I would like to invite you to vyzvat, abyste se vyhnuli avoid two extremes. (…) I dvěma extrémům. (…) Chtěl would also like to invite our bych rovněž naši opozici opposition to support the vyzvat k tomu, aby Government’s measures. podporovala opatření vlády. D4: Ale nemluvme teď jenom D4: But let us not only talk of o vládních opatřeních. the Government’s measures 78

Mluvme o tom, co můžeme now. Let us talk of what we udělat my sami. (…) Dělejme alone can do. (…) Let us do vše pro to, abychom touto everything we can to pass this zkouškou vyšli se ctí. test with honor. Hedging D1: Zaprvé, v době první D1: First, in the era of the First The President uses republiky se nakonec ustálila Republic, the presidents hedging to structure prezidentská tradice vánočních traditionally gave a Christmas his discourse to poselství, a tuto tradici Message and this tradition had appear detailed and zastavil až , not been broken until the 1st more credible (listing který pronesl 1. ledna 1949 January 1949 when Klement examples and právě novoroční projev. Gottwald delivered his first offering extra New Year Speech. historical and D2: Řekl jsem jim, vítejte v D2: I told them, welcome to a statistical úspěšné zemi, zemi, která má successful country, country, information). He also nejnižší míru nezaměstnanosti which has the lowest employs the v Evropské unii, která má unemployment rate in the technique to avoid stabilní ekonomický růst, která European Union, which has a directness and to má relativně klesající a stable economic growth, which tone down the poměrně nízký státní dluh, a relatively decreasing and quite intensity of the zemi, kde roste jak průměrná low state debt, country where message (ex. during mzda, tak starobní důchody. the average wage as well as the pandemic). retirement income are growing. D3: Pokud jsem správně D3: If I am correctly informed, informován, první dodávka the first supply of the testing testovacích přípravků již resources has already arrived to dorazila do České republiky a the Czech Republic and also the k dispozici je i letadlo Ruslan, airplane Ruslan is at disposal, a velkokapacitní letadlo, které high capacity aircraft, , which tuto pomoc bude zajišťovat v will secure this help in the budoucnosti. future. D4: Kdysi, když počet D4: Once, when the number of mrtvých byl na velmi nízké the dead was at a very low level, úrovni, jsme se mohli utěšovat we could have comforted tím, že covid se dá vyléčit, ale ourselves that covid can be úmrtí se samozřejmě vyléčit cured, but death of course nedá a je to nesmírná ztráta cannot be cured and it is a great pro naši společnost, pro rodiny loss for our society, for the těch, kdo zemřeli, pro všechny families of those who died, for z nás. all of us.

Figure 13. Discourse analysis of the President’s rhetorical strategies (own table)

President Zeman: Social Antagonism - structural oppositions - “ideological squaring” - “us” and “them” division - individualisation (honorifics) vs collectivisation (anonymisation), e.g. Rhethorical Strategies table - cultural war against Havel’s “Truth and Love” philosophy - Zeman’s critics, clueless, unsuccessful, jealous The Other Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Civil Society D1: ti, kdo hází květiny do odpadkových D1: those who throw flowers into litter bins košů, jsou podle mého mínění primitivní are, in my opinion, primitive fools hlupáci D2: I noticed a demonstration of high D2: povšiml jsem si demonstrací school students againt climate change, středoškoláků proti klimatické změně, nic nothing against it, I would only be glad if proti tomu, byl bych pouze rád, aby they would demonstrate on Saturday and demonstrovali v sobotu a v pátek se učili study on Friday Media, NGOs, D1: Lepšolidé jsou ti, kteří se považují za D1: The Better-People are those who 79

Intelligence něco lepšího než my ostatní a kteří nám consider themselves better than the rest of neustále radí, co máme dělat, a kteří své us, who keep mentoring us on what to do názory považují za nadřazené názorům and who regard their views superior to those těch druhých. (…) ignorujte radílky, kteří of others. (…) ignore the smart alecks who sami v životě nedokázali nic. have yet to prove themselves. D2: Chtěl bych vám všem popřát, abyste i D2: I would like to wish everyone, to keep nadále byli svobodnými osobnostmi, které on being free people, which form their own si vytvářejí svůj vlastní názor a nenechají opinion and do not let themselves be se nikým manipulovat. manipulated by anyone. D3: Nevšímejte si příliš poštěkávání a D3: Do not mind too much the barking and vřeštění našich novinářských komentátorů, screeching of our news commentators, who, kteří jako obvykle píší o všem a nerozumí as usual, write about everything and ničemu. understand nothing. GAL = Green, D2: Klimatičtí proroci mají ovšem i D2: However the climate profets have also Alternative, důsledky, které už nejsou naivní, nejsou effects, which are not naive nor idealistic Libertarian idealistické, ale jsou velmi a velmi anymore, but they are very and very přízemní. (…) Věřím, že nedojde k tomu, earthbound. (…) I believe that the aby úvahy o zelené Evropě dosáhly té reflections on green Europe will not achieve míry, že se zde objeví například i zelené such a degree that for example green bankovnictví, to znamená, že úvěry banking will appear here, that credits will nebudou poskytovány podle bonity not be given based on the quality of an investičních projektů, ale podle zelené investment project but according to the ideologie. green ideology. D3: Dokonce i herci, z nichž někteří si D3: Even actors, some of whom complained stěžovali, že nemají kšefty, by udělali lépe, they didn’t have gigs, would do better if kdyby například navštívili domovy they would for example visit a retirement důchodců a přinesli tam trochu radosti. home and bring some happiness there. D4: jakýsi divadelní principál zcela D4: some theatre manager quite recently nedávno prohlásil, že koronavirus je proclaimed, that coronavirus is just a light jenom lehká chřipka, a kritizoval opatření flu and criticized Government’s measures. vlády. (…) Mám tím samozřejmě na mysli (…) Of course, I mean the so-called Anti- takzvané antirouškaře, ale i další, zubaře, Mask people, but also others, dentists, kardiology, zpěváky. cardiologists, singers. Opposition/Political D1: ti, kdo nás neustále varují před špiony, D1: those who constantly warn us of spies, adversaries/the z nás tak trochu dělají nesvéprávné a try to make us incapable beings, easy to Establishment (also manipulovatelné bytosti, které se nedokáží manipulate and lacking the capacity to the Security samy ubránit (…) A tito lidé nám chtějí protect ourselves (…) And these people Information radit. A totéž se samozřejmě týká i want to advise us. The same applies to Service, the EU) neúspěšných politiků. unsuccessful politicians, of course. D2: kritizována právě těmi, kdo přispěli k D2: criticized by those who contributed to jeho pomalosti. (…) Víte, co to jsou v its slowness (…) Do you know who the tomto smyslu parašutisti? To jsou lidé, parachutists are in this sense? They are kteří jsou na kandidátku shozeni shora. people, who are thrown on the candidate list Buď jsou to straničtí funkcionáři nebo from the top. Either party members or lidé, kteří nemají žádnou zkušenost s people who have no experience with the řízením velkých společenských celků. management of large social collectives. D3: Chtěl bych rovněž naši opozici vyzvat D3: I would also like to ask the opposition k tomu, aby podporovala opatření vlády, a to support the Government’s measures, and pokud toho není schopna, tak aby alespoň if it is unable to do so, to be at least quiet po dobu karantény mlčela. during the quarantine.

Figure 14. Discourse Analysis of the President’s construction of social antagonism (own table)

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7.2 Discourse Analysis of the Prime Minister Andrej Babiš

In order to characterize the Prime Minister’s agenda and rhetorical strategies, with a special focus on the construction of social antagonism, and thus uncover the changes in the official Czech discourse and its impact on democracy, the following four discourses were analyzed:

D5: “Preamble and Key Government Priorities” in the Policy Statement of the Government of the Czech Republic (27/06/2018), original Czech title: Programové prohlášení vlády - Preambule a zásadní priority vlády

D6: Prime Minister’s New Year’s Speech (01/01/2020), original Czech title: Novoroční projev předsedy vlády

D7: Prime Minister’s Address to all Citizens (23/03/2020), original Czech title: Projev předsedy vlády k občanům

D8: Prime Minister´s Extraordinary Speech (21/09/2020), original Czech title: Mimořádný projev předsedy vlády

Prime Minister Babiš: Agenda Message Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Interpretation We particularly D5: „naši potomci nám D5: “our offsprings will not The elderly have life think of our neodpustí, že jsme neudělali forgive us if we do not do experience and children and všechno, co jsme měli a mohli everything that we should and children are our seniors. udělat. (…) slevy z jízdného could have done.(…) future. Hence, pension ve vlacích a autobusech pro discounted train and bus fares reform, discounted seniory nad 65 let, žáky a for seniors over the age of 65, train and bus fares, studenty do dovršení věku 26 school pupils, and students up construction of let. (…) rychlejší realizaci to the age of 26. (…) faster affordable housing for výstavby dostupného bydlení construction of affordable seniors and young pro seniory a také pro mladé housing for seniors and young families are priorities. rodiny“ families” D6: „Naše budoucnost závisí D6: “Our future depends on our na našich dětech. (…) children. (…) The most Nejdůležitější věc v životě je important thing in life is family rodina a děti. Mít děti. Čím and children. Having children. víc dětí budeme mít, tím líp se The more children we have, the budeme mít.“ better off we will be.” D7: „Děkuju všem seniorům. D7: “I thank all our senior (…) Potřebujeme vás, ani citizens (…) We need you, nevíte jak. Děti potřebují more than you can know. babičky a dědečky a staří lidé Children need their mají životní zkušenost, která grandmothers and grandfathers; je pro nás a vždy byla old people have life experience nesmírně důležitá. that is, and has always been, Dědečkové a babičky, jste extremely important to us. naši, potřebujeme vás, dávejte So grandfathers and na sebe pozor, prosím.“ grandmothers, you are ours, we need you, do please take care of yourselves.” D8: „Právě starší a nemocné D8: “And it is older people and lidi musíme ochránit.“ the sick we have to protect. ” 81

We support D5: „dostupnost D5: “high-speed internet to be Like the President, the digitalization vysokorychlostního internetu available everywhere. (…) We PM promotes the including všude (…) jednotné služby. will create a centralized digitalization. centralized Vytvoříme centrální portál government portal where governmental státu, kde si občan bude moci citizens can sort out all of their services. vše vyřídit, a k tomu needs, and we will draw on využijeme služeb České pošty Czech Post’s services for those pro ty občany, kteří internet who do not have internet. nemají. Elektronizace musí Computerization must be in být všude, kde je to možné.“ place wherever possible.” D6: „Jeden úřad. Jedno D6: “One office. One stamp. razítko. To je to hlavní That is the magic formula. zaklínadlo. Digitization will also simplify Zjednodušení do života lives.” přinese i digitalizace.“ We offer a new D5: „Prostě mysleme na D5: “let’s think about the future Questionable, short- long-term vision budoucnost a nežijme jen instead of only living for today. term populist policies for a prosperous dneškem. (…) Chceme jím (…) we would like to guide the taking advantage of future of the posunout hospodářství a celou economy and society at large in the favorable Czech Republic. společnost novým směrem, a new direction guaranteeing economic situation in který by měl zaručit, aby naše that our country can hold its Europe to increase země obstála v evropské own in the European economy government-spending ekonomice a v měnícím se and in a changing world.” and debt. No profound světě.“ moral appeal, only D6: „kompletní investiční D6: “the complete investment materialist vision. potenciál naší země na potential of our country for the příštích 30 let“ next 30 years” We do not just D5: „Nechceme o tom, co nás D5: “Rather than just debating The Prime Minister’s talk about goals v budoucnu čeká, vést pouze what the future holds for us, we populist appeal is like other diskuse, ale chceme udělat vše want to move beyond words constructed on his politicians, but we pro to, abychom se měli lépe. and do everything we can to identity of an outsider work hard to (…) Chceme konkrétní kroky improve our lot. (…) We want with a non-political achieve them. bez zdlouhavých a to engage in specific action background, despite neplodných diskusí.“ without lengthy and futile his past involvement debate.” with top politicians. D6: „Vím, opozice říká, že je D6: “I know the opposition says Being a successful celý ten náš národní plán that our national plan is businessman, Andrej nereálný. Zase ta skepse, ten unrealistic. Once again: the Babiš promised to run negativismus za každou cenu. same scepticism, the negativism the state like a Budu na ministry naléhat, aby at all costs. I will impress upon business and work s plánem aktivně pracovali a the ministers to actively work hard – unlike realizovali ho podle with this plan and implement it politicians, as the připravenosti jednotlivých in line with the readiness of slogans of his ANO projektů.“ individual projects.” movement declare. D7: „Děláme pro to s kolegy a D7: “We are doing the very se všemi institucemi státu to best we can with our colleagues nejlepší, co jde. (…) Celá and with all institutions of state. vláda pracuje nonstop, jak se (…) The whole government is to jen dá.“ working non-stop in every possible way,” D8: „Od března jedeme sedm D8: “Since March we’ve been dní v týdnu a bojujeme s touto working round the clock to ojedinělou situací.“ tackle this unparalleled situation.” National security D5: „Vláda ve svém úsilí D5: “The Government will not Although the Czech and the rejection zajistit bezpečnost a ochránit relent in its efforts to safeguard Republic is one the of the migration zemi před nejrůznějšími útoky security and protect the country safest countries in the quotas are our top zvenčí nepoleví (…) spolu se from all manner of external world, the politization priorities. zeměmi V4 a jinými incursions (…) together with of migration and 82

evropskými spojenci bude the V4 countries and other terrorism issues are navrhovat jiný systém řešení European allies, will put on top of the political vyvolané migrace založený na forward an alternative system to agenda. bázi zajištění bezpečnosti deal with the migration issue vnějších hranic, práva výběru that relies on the security of uprchlíků na území před external borders, and the vnějšími hranicemi Evropské freedom to select refugees unie“ before they cross the European Union’s external borders” D6: „Tam, kde jsme odmítli D6: “It is there that we refused povinné kvóty ilegálních the mandatory quotas for illegal migrantů a jejich migrants and the redistribution přerozdělování, protože thereof, because the safety of bezpečnost našich občanů je our citizens is an absolute pro nás absolutní priorita. (…) priority for us. (…) It is where Tam, kde aktivně prezentuju I actively present our vision for naše vize pro silnou jednotnou a strong, united and safe a bezpečnou Evropu. Europe.” We fight actively D5: „Jedním z hlavních cílů D5: “One of this Government’s Although the PM for national této vlády je boj za zájmy headline objectives is to fight presents himself as interests abroad, in českých občanů v Evropské for Czech citizens’ interests more pro-European the European unii (…) Česká republika se within the European Union than the President, he Union. aktivně zapojí do zásadních (…)The Czech Republic will opposes further politických jednání v rámci actively engage in key political integration. Instead, EU. (…) Chceme být v negotiations within the EU together with the V4, Evropě vidět. Musíme (…)We want to be seen in he stresses national důrazněji hájit své zájmy ve Europe. We must be more sovereignty wanting sjednocující se Evropě. (…) assertive in defending our only membership Nechceme jen přikyvovat interests in a unifying Europe. benefits, but no Bruselu, ale chceme jeho (…) We do not simply want to responsibility-sharing politiku měnit.“ nod to Brussels, we want to or solidarity. change its policies.” D6: „Naše vláda sebevědomě D6: “Our government prezentuje naši zemi v confidently represents our zahraničí. Na půdě OSN i country abroad. At the UN and v Bruselu (…) kde tvrdě in Brussels at the European prosazuju české zájmy. Council (…) where I fight hard for Czech interests.” We build a lot and D5: „Naším záměrem je stavět D5: “We plan to build Contrary to the Prime reconstruct. dálnice, obchvaty měst. Začít motorways and bypasses. To Minister’s claims, his s přípravou trasy pro start preparing a route for high- Government has not vysokorychlostní železnice a s speed rail and the renovation of in fact advanced rekonstrukcemi nádraží (…) stations (…) the construction of much in the area of výstavbu nových bloků pro new units at nuclear power construction. He lies jaderné elektrárny (…) začít s stations (…) start renovating about the number of rekonstrukcemi památkových monuments in all regions in kilometers of objektů ve všech regionech. order to attract tourists away highways contructed. from the beaten track.” D6: „Od mého vstupu do D6: “Since I entered the vlády jsme zatím otevřeli 91 cabinet, we have opened 91 kilometrů nových dálnic a kilometres of new motorways zahájili stavbu dalších 163 and started construction on a kilometrů.“ further 163 kilometres. ” We promote D5: „Prioritou je pro nás D5: “We will prioritize energy Unlike the President, ecological zajištění energetické security and self-sufficiency in the PM claims to policies. bezpečnosti a soběstačnosti ve the generation of electricity. promote ecological výrobě elektrické energie. (…) We will protect the soil… policies. He openly (…) Budeme chránit půdu… supports them

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D6: „mně i mým kolegům D6: “our planet is important to abroad (in the EU) záleží na naší planetě, přijali me and my colleagues, we have but is more skeptical jsme jasná opatření. Výrazně adopted clear measures. We are about their snižujeme emise skleníkových markedly reducing greenhouse implementation in plynů. Investujeme do gas emissions. We are investing front of the citizens. obnovitelných zdrojů. A in renewable resources. And we připravujeme se na konec are preparing for the end of the doby uhelné. (…) Jsem rád, že coal age. (…) I am glad that we jsme v Bruselu nedávno jádro recently managed to push this prosadili jako čistý zdroj.“ through in Brussels as a clean energy source.” ANO D5: „Ve snaze nalézt D5: “The Government stands This populist appeal party/Government maximální možný konsenzus ready to involve the reflects the wide is for everyone. I je vláda připravena do plnění opposition’s experts, social electoral base of am the ANO priorit vlády a programového partners’ representatives, ANO, defined neither party/Government. prohlášení zapojit i odborníky professional associations, by ideology nor policy opozice, zástupce sociálních interest groupings, other similar attitudes nor a specific partnerů, profesní a zájmová organisations, and local social class, but rather sdružení a organizace i government in the by economic územní samosprávy.“ implementation of government competence. It priorities and the Policy opposes the multiparty Statement in a bid to find the conception of maximum possible consensus.” democracy. D6: „Ale chceme zapojit i vás, D6: “But I also want to involve všechny občany naší země. you, all the citizens of our Do diskuse. Do národních country. In the discussion. In konzultací. Podívejte se, co v national consultations. Look plánu podle vás chybí, nebo and see what you think the plan co naopak nechcete. Pojďme o is missing or, on the other hand, tom diskutovat. Napište mi na what you don't want in it. Let's mailovou adresu discuss this. Write me at the e- [email protected].“ mail address [email protected].” D7: „Ale nebojte se. Jsme v D7: “But please do not worry. tom společně a já jsem tu pro We are in this together and I každého z vás kdykoliv.“ am here for each of you at any time.” D8: „Naše vláda se snaží D8: “Our government tries to myslet na všechny skupiny think of all groups of the obyvatel.“ population. ” We invest in D5: „Potřebujeme podpořit D5: “We need to support As PM Babiš people. produktivní investice pro malé productive investments for represents the will of a střední firmy (…) pro mladé small and medium-sized the people, his rodiny i seniory.“ enterprises (…) for young government’s goal is families and seniors alike.” concentrated on short- D6: „Protože hlavně do vás se D6: “Because it is mainly in term populist policies. naše vláda rozhodla investovat you that our government has Overall, he has kept a vy nám to vracíte svou decided to invest, and you will this promise, indebting důvěrou a spotřebou. Nebudu return it to us with your however the future říkat čísla, kolik přidáváme confidence and consumption. I generation. důchodcům, učitelům, won't quote the numbers of how lékařům, sestřičkám, much we are tacking on for policistům, hasičům vojákům retirees, teachers, doctors, a pracovníkům v sociálních nurses, police officers, službách.“ firefighters, soldiers and social service workers.” I am open and D5: „Víme, že v té době vše D5: “While we realise that not In contrast to the inept honest; we keep nevyřešíme, ale chceme everything will be resolved in corrupt politicians, the our promises. nastoupit tuto cestu.“ that time, it is our ambition to PM claims to offer 84

break ground here.” transparency and action, which he documents in his D6: „Prostě jen plníme, co D6: “We are simply fulfilling regular social media jsme vám slíbili a budeme v what we promised, and we will posts. tom pokračovat.“ continue to do so.” D7: „Říkám to otevřeně. D7: “I say this quite openly. Takhle to je.“ Because that is how it is.” D8: „Budu k vám jako D8: “As always, I will be vždycky upřímný a otevřený.“ honest and candid with you.” The country is D5: „Chceme (…) udělat vše D5: “We want to (…) do Throughout his doing extremely pro to, abychom se měli lépe“ everything we can to improve speeches, the PM well, and it will be our lot” reiterates the main doing even better. D6: „Nemyslíte si, že se nám D6: “Don't think we are doing ANO slogan, “YES, it daří? Já ano! A řeknu vám, well? I do! I'll tell you why. will get better”, taking proč. A taky vám povím, co And I'll also tell you what we credit for most of the plánujeme dělat, aby tohle are planning to do so that this country’s podle mě velmi dobré období era, in my opinion a good one, achievements, not jen tak neskončilo. (…) Čeká doesn't end. (…)We have an presenting other nás skvělé období. Jsme amazing time before us. We are factors such was the Česká republika, země pro the Czech Republic, a country positive economic budoucnost. (…) Máme for the future. (…)We have an situation in Europe. výhled na rok 2021 a rozpočet outlook for 2021 and the budget bude jednoznačně will be decidedly pro-growth.” prorůstový.“ D7: „Vedeme si velice dobře. D7: “We are doing very well. A nepochybuji, že to And I am sure we will see this zvládneme. (…) A vyjdeme z through. (…) And we will come téhle krize ještě silnější a lepší out of this crisis even stronger jako lidé, i jako národ.“ and better, both as people and as a nation.” D8: „Zachránili jsme tím D8: “we saved thousands of tisíce životů. Proto jsme první lives. That’s why we coped vlnu zvládli tak dobře.“ with the first wave so well.” We are doing D5: „Naši občané žijí v D5: “Our citizens live in a safe To further convince better than other bezpečné zemi a to je dnes country, a blessing bestowed on the citizens of progress countries of the hodnota, kterou se nemůže few of the nations around us.” achieved under his EU. mnoho okolních zemí Government, he pochlubit.“ constantly compares D6: „Rosteme. Bohatneme. D6: “We are growing. We are the Czech Republic Víc než většina zemí getting richer. More than most to other countries. eurozóny a Evropské unie. eurozone and European Union (…) Máme stále dvojnásobný countries. (…) We still have růst, než je průměr zemí twice the growth of the Evropské unie, a velmi nízkou European Union average, and a zadluženost. “ very low debt rate.” D7: „Jsme jedna z mála zemí, D7: “We are one of the few která nepromeškala ten countries that did not miss the správný čas na zavedení right moment to put in place přísných opatření, která strict measures to prevent the zamezí živelnému šíření unrestrained spread of the nákazy. (…) Dokazuje to i disease. (…) International mezinárodní srovnání, že comparisons also show that jedna z nejpřísnějších a some of the most stringent and nejčasnějších opatření zavedla earliest measures were in fact právě naše vláda.“ introduced by our government.” D8: „Bylo to poté, co jsme D8: “That was after we became zarazili šíření nemoci jako one of the first countries in jedni z prvních v Evropě. (…) Europe to stop the spread of the

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Švédsko šlo cestou promoření, disease. (…) Sweden went což vyústilo v to, že tam down a herd immunity path that zemřelo celkově 5 865 lidí s resulted in a total of 5,865 covidem. Jedenáctkrát více people dying with Covid there. než u nás.“ Eleven times more then here.” We are a small D6: „Jak už bylo řečeno – D6: “As has already been said – To indicate that the nation but with nejsme velký národ. Ale we are not a large nation. But Czech Republic is a great talent and obrazy našich mistrů, the paintings of our masters, talented nation, but values. literatura, architektura, our literature, architecture, governed by the inept, divadlo, film a samozřejmě theatre, film and of course the and thus needs his česká filharmonie jsou tím, co Czech Philharmonic are what effective government, ve světě zanechává významné leave behind an important he emphasizes the povědomí o českém národě – awareness of the Czech nation traditional notion of o jeho talentech a hodnotách.“ in the world – of its talents and “Czech golden hands”, values.” D7: „Když se podívám zpět na D7: “When I look back at the zásadní okamžiky v historii key moments in the history of naší země, tak jsme je vždy our country, we have always překonali odvahou, overcome them with courage, ohleduplností a vzájemnou consideration and by helping pomocí.“ each other. In spite of all the pain, the suffering and the injustices.” We will get D7: „koronavirus společnými D7: “we will stop the Lack of a concrete through the silami zastavíme (…) Rád coronavirus through our joint plan, mostly thanking, coronavirus bych vás proto všechny efforts (…) I would therefore calming and praising. pandemic if we požádal o trpělivost. (…) když like to ask all of you for your work together and k sobě budeme všichni patience. (…) if we are all follow the ohleduplní a budeme considerate towards each other Government’s dodržovat nová opatření.“ and keep to the new measures.” measures. D8: „Zvládneme to, ale jen D8: “We can cope, but only if společně, stejně jako na jaře. we come together like we did in Právě proto zase musíme být spring. And that is why we have zodpovědní, ohleduplní a to be responsible, considerate důslední v dodržování and consistent in complying pravidel.“ with the rules.” During the D7: „Nikdo z nás nebyl na D7: “None of us were prepared Unclear coronavirus crisis, něco takového připravený. for anything like this. (…) So communication with we made some (…) Proto nám, prosím vás, please forgive us any mistakes the public, delayed mistakes because odpusťte dílčí chyby nebo or problems along the way. reponse to the second we could not be problémy. Je jich spousta. There are many of them. (…) wave due to elections, ready for this. (…) Já jako premiér země Of course, as Prime Minister of loss of trust. samozřejmě osobně the country, I take personal odpovídám za všechna responsible for all these crisis krizová opatření. A beru na measures. And I take on full sebe plnou politickou political responsibility.” odpovědnost.“ D8: „I já jsem se nechal unést D8: “I, too, let myself get nastupujícím létem a carried away by the start of atmosférou ve společnosti. To summer and the atmosphere in byla chyba, kterou nechci society. That was a mistake I zopakovat. Od března jedeme don’t want to repeat. Since sedm dní v týdnu a bojujeme s March we’ve been working touto ojedinělou situací, na round the clock to tackle this kterou nemohl být nikdo unparalleled situation that připraven.“ nobody could have been prepared for.”

Figure 15. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s agenda (own table)

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Prime Minister Babiš: Rhetorical Strategies Figures of speech Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Interpretation Lexical choices and D5: neboť takto koncipované D5: The solution designed in Combining genre of řešení není efektivní; such a way is ineffective; the informal and communication realizaci šesti hlavních pursuit of six core strategic formal lexicons, strategických směrů rozvoje tenets for the development of business rhetoric: naší země; nechceme jen our country; we do not simply vague přikyvovat Bruselu, ale want to nod to Brussels, we performance chceme jeho politiku měnit. want to change its policies related D6: Moody’s zvedla rating D6: Moody's raised our rating expressions, nejvýš v historii; podle to the highest point in history; English words in žebříčku od Deloittu; z according to the Deloitte Index; Czech, statistics. šestatřiceti 36 hodnocených of the thirty-six countries zemí OECD jsme desátí evaluated by the OECD, we are nejlepší; kde tvrdě prosazuju the tenth best; where I fight české zájmy hard for Czech interests D7: Celá vláda pracuje D7: The whole government is nonstop; Frajírci, co mají být working non-stop; These show- v karanténě a klidně si dají offs who are supposed to be in společně pivo u dveří quarantine and instead are hospod, to fakt nejsou žádní having a beer together at the hrdinové. Spíš zbabělci pub door are not really heroes. They are cowards really D8: všichni jsme se chtěli D8: we all wanted to breathe volně nadechnout a užít si freely and enjoy summer; it is léto; je to otravné a ne moc annoying and not very příjemné; tam zemřelo comfortable; 5 865 people celkově 5 865 lidí overall died there Overlexicalisation: D5: Chceme i větší podporu D5: We want also like greater Repetition epistrophe, epizeuxis pro boj s daňovými ráji, support to combat tax havens transmits daňovými úniky. Chceme i and tax evasion. We also want decidedness and podporu pro naše záměry v backing for our plans to urgency of rozvoji jaderné energetiky. develop nuclear energy. We do message: Nechceme jen přikyvovat not simply want to nod to convincing the Bruselu, ale chceme jeho Brussels, we want to change its public of progress, politiku měnit. policies. trying to regain D6: Dokážeme se radovat z D6: Can we take joy in the fact support and toho, že se nám tak daří? that we are so well off? Don't control during the Nemyslíte si, že se nám daří? think we are doing well? I do! coronavirus Já ano! (…) Ano, České (…) Yes, the Czech Republic is pandemic. republice se daří. Opravdu doing well. Very well. (…) daří. (…) Každý člověk se Everyone wants to be well off. I chce mít dobře. Neznám snad don't know anyone who doesn't nikoho, kdo by se nechtěl mít want to be well off. So I wish dobře. for YOU, for you to be well Tak vám přeju, ať VY, právě off! vy se dobře máte! D7: Děkuju všem, kteří nám D7: Thanks to all those who are pomáháte a podporujete nás. helping and supporting us. Děkuji všem zdravotníkům Thanks to all our helthcare (…) workers (…) Thanks to all Děkuju všem rodičům (…) parents (…) Thanks to all Děkuju všem seniorům. seniors. D8: ty roušky nenosíte kvůli D8: you’re not wearing Babišovi, Vojtěchovi, facemasks for the sake of Prymulovi, ale kvůli vašim Babiš, Vojtěch or Prymula, but rodičům a prarodičům, kvůli for the sake of your parents and 87

vašim blízkým, kvůli vašim grandparents, for the sake of kamarádům a známým (…) your nearest and dearest, your Koronavirus jsme porazili friends and acquaintances (…) jednou, porazíme ho i We beat coronavirus once, podruhé we’ll beat it again Intertextuality, D6: „Milí spoluobčané, D6: “Dear fellow citizens, Assuming the references už delší dobu si kladu tuto For some time now I have been authority of základní otázku: proč v době, asking myself a fundamental Václav Havel, but kdy nás neohrožuje, ani do question: why, at a time when misinterpreting his našich věcí nezasahuje žádná nothing threatens us, nor is any message. cizí moc a my máme – jako foreign power interfering in our stát i jako občané – svůj osud affairs, and when we have – as poprvé po staletích skutečně a country and as citizens – our ve vlastních rukách, máme fate truly in our own hands after tak málo důvodů k radostné centuries, do we have so few spokojenosti.“ Tato slova reasons for cheerful zazněla přesně před satisfaction?” These words osmadvaceti lety, v roce were spoken exactly twenty- 1992 v novoročním projevu eight years ago, in the year tehdejšího prezidenta 1992 in the New Year's speech Václava Havla.; Jak říkal of the President at the time, Alois Rašín, jsme malý Václav Havel.; As Alois Rašín národ, a proto musíme said, we are a small nation and usilovat o to, abychom měli thus we must endeavour to have co nejvíce vzdělaných lidí. as many educated people as possible. Rhetorical tropes: D5: Chceme být v Evropě D5: We want to be seen in Simpler metaphors, similes etc. vidět. (…) Nechceme jen Europe. (…) expressions, more přikyvovat Bruselu popular and D6: Představte si, že bych D6: Imagine I was Harry Potter modern choices byl Harry Potter, měl and had a magic wand and than Zeman. kouzelnou hůlku a proměnil could transform these projects ty projekty hned teď ve into reality right now. We skutečnost. Stali bychom se would immediately become a okamžitě druhým second Switzerland. Švýcarskem D7: včetně těch, kdo fakt D7: including those for whom nemají na růžích ustláno life is no bed of roses a D8: I já jsem se nechal unést D8: I, too, let myself get carried nastupujícím létem a away by the start of summer atmosférou ve společnosti. and the atmosphere in society. (…) Koronavirus jsme (…) We beat coronavirus once, porazili jednou, porazíme ho we’ll beat it again. i podruhé. Modality D5: Chceme konkrétní kroky D5: We want to engage in High (deontic) bez zdlouhavých a specific action without lengthy modality neplodných diskusí. (…) and futile debate. (…) We must expressing Musíme důrazněji hájit své be more assertive in defending certainty, zájmy ve sjednocující se our interests in a unifying confidence, and Evropě. Europe. decisiveness. To further compel the D6: Ale chceme zapojit i vás, D6: But I also want to involve audience, the PM všechny občany naší země. you, all the citizens of our speaks in the first- (…) musíme investovat do country. (…) we must invest in person plural. energetické bezpečnosti. energy security.

D7: Chci proto všechny D7: That is why I want to call znovu vyzvat, abychom byli on everyone once more to act zodpovědní. (…) A responsibly. (…) I am sure we 88

nepochybuji, že to will see this through. zvládneme.

D8: A to nikdo nechceme. D8: None of us want that. (…) (…) Právě proto zase And that is why we have to be musíme být zodpovědní, responsible, considerate and ohleduplní a důslední v consistent in complying with dodržování pravidel. the rules. Hedging D5: To znamená vyrovnaný D5: This means having a Almost lack of státní rozpočet a nový zákon balanced central government hedging, short, o příjmových daních. budget and passing a new even nominal Důslednou kontrolu Income Tax Act. Rigorous sentences to regulovaných cen, především regulated price controls, express action, vodného a stočného. Lépe especially for water and resoluteness, and spravovat majetek státu. sewerage rates. Improvements results. Padding Bojovat s lichvou. in the management of state used when giving assets. Fighting usury. unpleasant news or D6: Ale chceme zapojit i vás, D6: But I also want to involve supporting an všechny občany naší země. you, all the citizens of our argument, e.g. Do diskuse. Do národních country. In the discussion. In statistics. konzultací. Podívejte se, co v national consultations. Look plánu podle vás chybí, nebo and see what you think the plan co naopak nechcete. Pojďme is missing or what you don't o tom diskutovat. Napište mi want in it. Let's discuss this. na mailovou adresu Write me at the e-mail address [email protected]. [email protected].

D7: Ale jedna věc je jasná. D7: But one thing is clear. To Teď už všem. Vedeme si everyone by now. We're doing velice dobře. very well.

D8: Epidemie je zpět. D8: The epidemic is back. Bohužel. Čísla nákazy Unfortunately. Infection závratně rostou. numbers are soaring.

Figure 16. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s rhetorical strategies (own table)

Prime Minister Babiš: Social Antagonism (critique but at the same time wants to be a party for everyone) The Other Quotation (CZ) Translation (EN) Politicians/the D5: Tato vláda nebude do státní D5: This Government will not parachute Establishment/Opposition správy dosazovat politické political appointees into state nominanty, naopak státní správu administration. On the contrary, it will otevře a odpolitizuje.“ open up and depoliticise state D6: opozice říká, že je celý ten náš administration. národní plán nereálný. Zase ta D6: the opposition says that our national skepse, ten negativismus za každou plan is unrealistic. Once again: the same cenu. (…) Za naší vlády se nikdy scepticism, the negativism at all costs. nebude opakovat děsivá situace z (…) Our government will never repeat the roku 2009, kdy vláda právě v době frightening situation of 2009, when during ekonomického ochlazení zaškrtila an economic cooling down the veřejné rozpočty, vzala lidem peníze government cut back public budgets, took a tím ekonomické problémy ještě people's money and thus augmented the umocnila a neúměrně prodloužila economic problems further and prolonged them disproportionately. Migrants D5: odmítnutí existující úpravy D5: rejection the existing refugee quota uprchlických kvót (…) práva výběru arrangements (…) freedom to select uprchlíků na území před vnějšími refugees before they cross the European 89

hranicemi Evropské unie (…) Union’s external borders (…) immigrant imigrantské kvóty, které odmítáme quotas that we reject D6: Tam, kde jsme odmítli povinné D6: It is there that we refused the kvóty ilegálních migrantů. mandatory quotas for illegal migrants. Media (not always, as an D6: Často slyšíte v médiích, že, se D6: You often hear in the media that the owner of a large part of ochlazuje světová ekonomika, že global economy is cooling down and media) přijdou horší časy. Že všechny ty harder times are coming. That we can't plány nezvládneme. Pořád se tím manage all these plans. Someone is někdo snaží strašit. always trying to drum up fear with this. D7: Děkuju taky našim všem D7: I also thank our public broadcast veřejnoprávním médiím, která byla media, which were ready and responded připravená a zareagovala na situaci to the situation by launching new spuštěním nových pořadů, výukou programmes, by teaching children, and dětí, ale i informačním kanálem pro also with an information channel for our seniory. Děkuji také všem dalším senior citizens. I also thank all other médiím za uklidňování našich media for helping to maintain calm among občanů. our citizens.

Figure 17. Discourse analysis of the Prime Minister’s construction of social antagonism (own table)

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